First published in 2017 by

Schism prεss2
First edition
ISBN: 978-1543166231

Copyright © Nicola Masciandaro

Cover design by GJS

Frontispiece: ‘The Beheading of St. John The Baptist’ (detail) by
Giovanni di Paolo

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including pho-
tocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without written consent of the publisher, except where
permitted by law.

Printed in London, UK.

For Elias & Nadja Merhige
We are the limbs of that head. This body cannot be
decapitated.
– St. Augustine.
SACER
Nicola Masciandaro
FADE IN:

EXT. A SMALL ISLAND ON THE SEINE (March 18, 1314)

– EVENING

The bodies of two men burn at the stake. Tied to separate

poles, the torsos have slumped over so that their heads nearly
touch. In the distance is the skyline of medieval Paris.

A crowd stands and lingers in silence. Multicolored flames

lick the blackened, charred remains.1 Smoke and ashes mingle
in the evening air before a golden sunset. The mystery of dead
life floating between matter and light. A Franciscan FRIAR
stands before the pyre holding a metal Tau crucifix upon a
pole at eye-level to the bodies. The flared form of the cross is
similar to the cross patteé of the Templars.2 We zoom in slow-
ly, centered on a point between the corpses’ skulls.

BYSTANDER
See the heretic love-birds! Even in death they want to
kiss!

There is laughter and jeering from the crowd, shouts of “idola-

ters,” “sodomites” and “blasphemers.” Two SOLDIERS step
forward on either side of the FRIAR with long poles to stoke
the fire.

11
 LEFT SOLDIER
Templar flesh is tougher than a peacock’s!3

RIGHT SOLDIER
Maybe the friar’s cross saves it from the flame.

LEFT SOLDIER
The deeper to burn in hell!

The burning progresses and the skeletons blacken and smoke

as the flames die down. The camera zooms in slowly. A
DARK FIGURE emerges from the shadows and removes a
thigh bone from one of the skeletons.4 Black ash swirls in the
burning air. Closer and closer we zoom in slower and slower
motion, until we see a single moving mote of black ash, so
that it appears as if our vision collides with it in mid-air. We
then pass immediately into the interior of a black pyramid, so
as to produce the sense of a dimensional inversion of space
and time.5 Inside, the four triangular walls of the pyramid are
deep black, like onyx, while the floor appears immaterial, a
groundless ground of luminous void criss-crossed with veins
of oblivion or dark matter. All the angles of the pyramid, as
well as the diagonals on the square base glow with a golden
light. At the center of the X created by the diagonals on the
floor, a small glass-like ocular sphere projects patterns of tiny
dots on the four walls of the pyramid. We pass through the
pyramid and are now moving in the opposite direction, zoom-
ing away from as if having passed through a mirror, without
turning around. We are now inside of a small, square white
stone temple, the camera hovering as if it is itself a mote of
dust suspended in the air. In the center of the temple is a stone
basin into which a fine black dust is gathering into a small
pile, drawn by a mysterious magnetism. The camera zooms
into the dust on a similar path then goes black.

12
EXT. HILLSIDE WITH SMALL, SHALLOW CAVE NEAR
ASSISI (SEPTEMBER 29, 1978) – PREDAWN

THREE FIGURES assemble via automobiles at the end of a

road in the autumnal Umbrian countryside. They wear distinct
black clothing, in a style somewhere between neo-medieval
and fascist, but without shoes or gloves. They walk up to the
cave, which shows no signs of human presence. After a few
quiet words, one of them enters the cave, takes from a small
reliquary a cylindrical piece of charcoal and draws on the wall
a cross-like geometric image suggestive of both the human
form and a face. They gather around the drawing, stare at it for
a short while, then enter the drawing one by one, vanishing
through the wall.

INT. PAPAL APARTMENTS, POPE’S PRIVATE STUDY –

SUNRISE

One by one the THREE FIGURES enter the study through a

Renaissance painting of Christ on a Tau cross (Andrea Solar-
io’s Crucifixion would work)6 whose proportions match the
drawing in the cave. The POPE, seated over a cappuccino and
an old book (The Spiritual Exercise of St. Ignatius of Loyola)
is briefly surprised but then calm, as if he intuitively knows
what is happening. The POPE tears a piece of parchment from
the inside over of the book. We see, briefly, that the parchment
contains a pattern of small circles containing Arabic numbers
in radiating lines.

ONE OF THE THREE FIGURES

Servus servorum!

POPE
Into your hands I commend my spirit.
(handing the parchment to one of the THREE
FIGURES)

13
Two of the THREE FIGURES remove from the wall a life-
sized crucifix, dismember the statue of Christ upon it, then set
the cross on the ground. The POPE gets up and lays himself
upon it. They begin to drive nails into his hands and feet, one
FIGURE at his feet, and one at each of his hands.

THREE FIGURES
With this crime, we absolve you. With your sin, our
hands are clean. There is no sin . . .

POPE
Forgive them, for they know what they are doing.

After the POPE is elevated upside down on the cross,7 the

FIGURE at the POPE’s left hand takes out a small pouch of
ashes and pours it into the POPE’s mouth, nostrils, eyes, and
ears. The FIGURE at the right hand readies a short sword to
decapitate the POPE.

THREE FIGURES
(in unison)
Super non contra.8 There is no we!9

The POPE’s head falls to the ground bathed in his own spurt-
ing blood, which mixes with the ashes as his mouth audibly
says, “Elijah, Elijah.”10 The THREE FIGURES shout, “Arna
Dei.” Once the head is severed, the FIGURE who was at the
POPE’s feet cuts into his side near his heart and places the
piece of parchment deep inside. We zoom into the POPE’s
eyes, through his pupils, then into the fire-lit face of St. Peter
as he denies Christ before the cock crows,11 then through Pe-
ter’s eyes into a vision of Jesus on the cross in a cosmic void,
saying, “Why have you forsaken me?” The camera zooms into
Christ’s body, revealing a dark abstract corridor of lenses rem-
iniscent of the interior of both a camera and a tomb, followed
by a flash of light.

14
INT. FRANK MASTRO’S APARTMENT, LOWER EAST
SIDE, MANHATTAN, BEDROOM (SEPTEMBER 7, PRE-
SENT DAY) – EARLY MORNING

FRANK wakes as if startled by the vision of the previous sce-

ne. He stares into space for a moment, then turns on the light,
reaches for a notebook, and starts writing.

INT. OCULUS MEDIA LABORATORIES, CALIFORNIA –

MORNING

RICHARD OVERBY is leading an international group of in-

vestors on a tour through the Oculus Media laboratories. He
brings them to a circular room at the center of which is an
MRI machine, which is colored and lit to accentuate its re-
semblance to the human eye. On either side of the MRI are
two MEG machines, all black in color, with their characteristic
drop-down screens. The investors gather in a semi-circle,
RICHARD stands in the center.

RICHARD
For as long as humans have existed, we have sought to
make dreams a reality. That is what makes our species
so special. But there is one dream that still eludes us, a
dream which escapes us because it is already real, a
horizon we cannot reach because it is too close. I speak
of the dream of dreaming itself, of being able to dream,
with the full power of imagination, while we are awake.

The investors stir in approving anticipation.

RICHARD (cont’d)
Now, thanks to recent breakthroughs in research con-
ducted in this laboratory, Oculus Media stands at the
threshold of making this dream come true.

15
Two identical TWINS enter the room from behind the MRI
and stand next to the MEG machines. They are wearing sim-
ple dresses, Egyptian necklaces with symmetrical Eye of Ho-
rus designs, and are holding mask-like objects.

RICHARD (cont’d)
Please welcome Emma and Gemma, who will demon-
strate our discovery. The time is soon when we will not
only watch cinema, but dream it, envisioning our vision
in real time with the full power of the imagination oper-
ating in a state we call AS, ‘acute subjectivity.’12 Never
again will special effects not be good enough—they
will be better. Never again will a film not exceed your
expectations. The sky is no longer the limit when we
don’t look up there, but in here.
(pointing to his head)
Ladies.

The TWINS place the masks on their heads, covering their

eyes and ears.

RICHARD (cont’d)
These are prototypes of the Oculus mask, used to deliv-
er the matrix of impressions necessary to sync with the
embedded cinema protocols. Delivered audio-visually,
these impressions are harmless and non-interactive. Un-
like our would-be competitors, Oculus is committed to
100% non-invasive, pure neurocinema. Let’s keep the
brain implants where they belong, in the movies.

INT. FRANK MASTRO’S APARTMENT, LOWER EAST

SIDE, MANHATTAN – MIDDAY

FRANK goes to his study, opens a book at his desk, and plays
an old Italian song, “Melancolie in Settembre” by Peppino di
Capri.13 After a moment, he leans over as if peering into some-

16
thing. We see a tear fall onto a small mirror. FRANK picks up
his phone and takes a picture of the tear. He turns off the song,
brings up the picture on his computer screen, and zooms in as
if looking for something. The heart-like form of a face is visi-
ble.14 He gets a beautifully framed photograph of his dead
daughter ASTRA, which was shot on the Brooklyn Bridge,
and holds it next to the photograph. There is a similarity, but
there is also something subtly demonic about the face.
FRANK prints out the image and then draws over it with a
pencil the outline of the eyes, the double lines of the front of
the nose, and the nose-to-mouth lines, so that the design re-
sembles a winged creature and also a cross, like a seraph,
close to the form used by the THREE FIGURES in the open-
ing scene. As FRANK gazes into the design, the camera hov-
ers behind and above his head, and then around the room in an
unusual way, not directing us to anything in particular, but
suggesting the spontaneous drift of consciousness outside the
body as one’s imagination is activated. The small study is ra-
ther messy, crammed with books and papers and various ob-
jects. A number of storyboard drawings are visible and other
film-related objects, including an Italian poster for Forsaken
(“Desolato” in Italian), the lettering of which gives promi-
nence to the letters S-O-L. He kisses the photograph of AS-
TRA.

INT. OCULUS MEDIA LABORATORIES, CALIFORNIA –

MORNING (cont’d)

There are approving chuckles from the INVESTORS, one of

whom raises his hand.

MR. KAGO
Mr. Overby?

RICHARD
Yes, Mr. Kago. Please, call me Richard.

17
 MR. KAGO
Is the matrix always the same, or are different configu-
rations possible?

RICHARD
We are working to maximize customizability, so that
users will be able to select and even design their own
impression patterns, similar to a stereo equalizer.

MRS. RINEHART
Are there any side-effects?

RICHARD
No. The impressions are entirely used up or spent in the
process of projective viewing. And they are active only
in the presence of Oculus’s unique sequencing algo-
rithm, so no worries about seeing ghosts when you
pause the film to get a snack.

Chuckles from the crowd.

MS. JOSHI
How does this affect film production?

RICHARD
Almost everything is done in the editing lab. But we al-
so work directly with actors, who must be specially
trained to deliver psychic cues which are synchronized
to the impressional matrix. This is what generates the
affective depth of our neurocinematic experience, set-
ting it apart from mere visual effects. Later you will
have a chance to meet Robert Mastro, the star of Max
Sleiman’s latest film, Kingdom of Night – and my step-
son – who is working with Oculus in this capacity.

Signs of excitement. A small green light illuminates on each of

18
the TWIN’s masks

RICHARD (cont’d)
OK. Gemma, Emma.

The TWINS sit in their respective MEG machines, increasing

their resemblance to Egyptian goddesses. The screens in front
of them start to show a film, casting light on their faces. Other
screens in the room show the scans of their brain functions.

RICHARD (cont’d)
As you can see, they are now observing the same film.
Let’s turn our attention to the dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex.

RICHARD presses a button on a remote control to zoom in on

the MEG read out screens.

RICHARD (cont’d)
This is the region of the brain responsible for the lucid
dreaming state. Both cortexes are highly active, but
there are marked differences in patterning. If Gemma’s
imagination is a panther, Emma’s is a gazelle. This de-
gree of variance is otherwise unachievable, not without
the application of psycho-active substances. In other
words, we are now seeing, beyond a shadow of a doubt,
that the minds of our Oculus-imprinted viewers are
watching essentially different films.

The INVESTORS quietly applaud.

ANONYMOUS INVESTOR
Impressive. But they are not conscious of this, is that
correct?

19
 RICHARD
Only partially, Mr. X. We have yet to actualize the neu-
rocinema interface to full awareness levels. However,
unaccountable presences and lucid sensory memories,
positive signs of immanent projective viewing, are rec-
orded. But at present, only twenty-one percent of our
subjects report . . . seeing things. With the help of our
new research partners in Rome, we hope to turn the
corner toward total seamless AS by next spring. On that
note, let us proceed to the reception where the ladies
may share with you their impressions of the Oculus ex-
perience.

RICHARD leads the TWINS and the group of INVESTORS

out. We see them pass before the camera as if we are staying
behind. Once all have left, the camera makes a full pan of the
circular room in silence.

EXT. COFFEE SHOP IN BROOKLYN – MIDDAY

GARY THATCHER and ARIANA FOX at a cafe. They sit

silhouetted against the window, facing each other with their
laptops out, in such a way that the street scene outside feels
screenic and cinematically framed.

ARIANA
You had that dream again last night, didn’t you?

GARY
How did you know?

ARIANA
Something in your gaze, like it’s been . . . crushed.

GARY looks at ARIANA in an intense way.

20
 ARIANA
Are you still going to Brooklyn College to speak with
that film studies professor?

GARY
Yes, Frank Mastro, the director of Forsaken.

ARIANA
The one with the crazy beheading scene?

GARY
More like “miraculous.” Effects that real do not happen
by accident. I don’t think he knows what he did.

ARIANA
I still don’t get it. You are saying that he actually filmed
his imagination?

GARY
In a way. More like the camera saw a vision carried up-
on the light, like a television wave.

ARIANA
OK.

GARY
Why don’t you come with me today? It will be fun and
he’ll see what I mean more clearly with you there. “And
she will be a light between truth and your intellect.”15

ARIANA
Hmm?

GARY
Something Virgil says about Beatrice to Dante in Purga-
tory. Nevermind, a way of saying . . .

21
 ARIANA
Sweet. But no I think this is more you than me.

GARY
Our eyes receive, reflect, and project. Haven’t you ever
talked to someone just by gazing?

ARIANA
Maybe in a dream.

GARY winks. We see the reflection of his computer screen in

his eyes.

ARIANA
See the reflection of all in all.

GARY
Nice one. That’s how it really is. The world is cinema,
universal studios.16

ARIANA
Picture everything with the camera of me. Like Plato’s
cave?17

GARY
Exactly. I am the video of my own beheading.18

ARIANA
Weird. You lost me, or I lost myself.

GARY
Not weirder than being here in the first place.

ARIANA
That’s why I love you, because you found I in the first
place. So what about Forsaken?

22
 BARISTA
(overhearing)
Are you guys are talking about Forsaken? I gotta show
you my tattoo.

The BARISTA walks over and shows his tattoo: a naked

woman holding her own severed head with three streams of
blood flowing out into her own head’s mouth and the mouths
of two other figures, male and female.

ARIANA
No way. Behead me in four dimensions.19

BARISTA
What?

ARIANA
Nothing, just writing to myself. Hey, you and I, twin
tattoos? Cheaper than a ring.

GARY
Uh, think I will be going now.

ARIANA
OK, see you tonight. I love you!

GARY
Eye love you [silently mouthing ‘love you’].

INT. PSYCHOTHERAPIST’S OFFICE, MALIBU – LATE

MORNING

SAMANTHA OVERBY is seated comfortably before DR.

GOLDSMITH, who is wearing a turtleneck under his blazer
and has an egg-shaped sculpture on his desk.

23
 DR. GOLDSMITH
Happy birthday, Samantha.

SAMANTHA
Thank you.

DR. GOLDSMITH
How have you been since our last session?

SAMANTHA
OK. September is not easy for me. And I always seem
to remember my birthday in the wrong way.

DR. GOLDSMITH
What do you mean?

SAMANTHA
Like everything never stops happening in September,
including me.

DR. GOLSMITH
Sometimes the impossible totality of things catches up
with us. Is there anything in particular? You said “it.”

SAMANTHA
I don’t know. I left New York in September, and Rob-
ert’s father. But that was years ago.

DR. GOLDSMITH
Do you miss New York?

SAMANTHA
Not really, not Frank. He is coming out next week to
visit for the first time, for the premiere.

24
 DR. GOLDSMITH
But you two communicate don’t you?

SAMANTHA
Not really. Not since I left. But he knows it was for the
best.

DR. GOLDSMITH
That only makes it harder. The wounded pride of a fa-
ther.

SAMANTHA
And the pride of a wounded father. That was the root of
it, the drinking, drowning in sorrow over his firstborn.

DR. GOLDSMITH
And how is Robert? He must be excited.

SAMANTHA
Totally. He has worked so hard for this. And Richard
too. He is so happy for him, like he was his own.

DR. GOLDSMITH
Well that covers the men. What about you? How is your
art going?

SAMANTHA
Frustrating. But I realized something recently. A friend
told me the sculpture I was working on looked like a
dead fetus.

DR. GOLDSMITH
Yes?

SAMANTHA
Well, because my concept was totally different but she

25
only saw something . . . lifeless. Anyway, so we talk
more about it and she breaks down, sobbing. It turns out
that she had an abortion a long time ago and never
talked about it.

DR. GOLDSMITH
So she projected the suppressed experience onto your
sculpture. That is normal.

SAMANTHA
Yes, but the strange thing is, she was totally right. I
couldn’t see it. Then she said something that stuck with
me, that what haunts her is not the killing of life, but
taking away its chance to cry. The silence of it.

DR. GOLDSMITH
Interesting. Is this how you feel?

SAMANTHA
Like there’s this enormous sea inside which I use art to
not express, to keep at bay. It’s all twisted. Does that
make sense?

DR. GOLDSMITH
Our true self gets buried under an identity, a concept,
which blocks spontaneity, creativity. One must stay in
touch with that inner abyss, the trauma of being born.20
Otherwise . . .

SAMANTHA
So I’ve started a whole new body of work, a series of
emergent life forms in the shape of tears.

DR. GOLDSMITH
Wonderful. Today really is your birthday. We are born
every day. And this sounds like a beautiful way to cele-

26
 brate it.

SAMANTHA
Well it is too early to celebrate, but OK. I am still wor-
ried.

DR. GOLDSMITH
Exactly, you are worried.21 So let’s talk more about your
fears. That is why we are here.

SAMANTHA
But should I be? I mean, am I why I am here? I really
don’t know.

DR. GOLDSMITH
Who does?

SERIES OF SHOTS – FRANK EN ROUTE TO THE COL-

LEGE – MIDDAY

Along the way we see things related to the intersection of

head, vision, and camera: the MTA’s “If you see something,
say something” security notice; commuters absorbed in their
hand-held devices; a film poster for Drone, a Hollywood film
with tag-line “you’ll never see it coming”; security cameras
mounted on poles; a Go-Pro style headcam display in a shop
window; and finally, a newspaper cover with a still from the
latest terrorist beheading video. The shots should give a sense
of the quotidian horror of life.

EXT/INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE –

MIDDAY

MARSILIO BARBI, in a green suit, stands in his office sur-

veying the landscape, then returns to his desk where he has
been examining an array of mathematical formulas, geometric

27
diagrams, and data sheets. Placed prominently among them is
a facsimile of the blood-stained parchment placed inside the
Pope’s body, as well as a schematic diagram based on it that
resembles the Prime Number Cross, shaded to accentuate its
resemblance to the Templar cross.22 There is also a map of
Rome, with a transparent overlay of a complex of ley lines
radiating and intersecting through the Vatican. The overlay is
dated “28 Settembre 1978.” At the other side of the room,
CLAUDIA BRANDINI sits on an old, somewhat Masonic-
styled chair. She wears black, gold jewelry, and is petting a
white cat while studying an old book on a stand placed next to
the chair. MARSILIO picks up the phone.

RICHARD
Marsilio.

MARSILIO
Richard, hi. I will not make Max’s premiere this week-
end. Much to do here. Claudia is still coming of course,
for two days.
[CLAUDIA smiles and shifts in her chair]
She will carry the Sybil’s key. You are given access for
one hour on Sunday the 13th, Robert for 7 minutes. Fol-
low Claudia’s instructions to the letter. She will record.

RICHARD
I will.

MARSILIO
Enjoy! And no lies. The channel must be kept clean.

RICHARD
I understand. As before.

MARSILIO
She will use a new name. See that she has everything

28
she needs. And intimate nothing, especially to Frank.

RICHARD
OK. But I doubt Mastro retains anything of the 1978
transmission. Our analyses shows that the Forsaken ef-
fects were epiphenomenal, only an echo.

MARSILIO
Data cannot grasp the depth of such images, which do
not pass away or cease bleeding into things.

RICHARD
Robert is ours and Samantha confirms that whatever in-
spiration Frank conducted died with the child. I do not
see the danger.

MARSILIO
How can you? The girl’s death gave time to grow Ocu-
lus. But that was 1987, and she or he will soon be with-
in three years of thirty-three in the next body, likely to
re-establish contact and minister latent DGI impressions
from the ’78 discharge.

RICHARD
DGI?

MARSILIO
Dispensatio gratiae imaginalis.

RICHARD
So eliminate Frank.

MARSILIO
Richard! Please, it is not so simple as your American
spirit wants. That would be riskier than you can imag-
ine. Then we lose the thread, the potential of weaving it.

29
 All depends on being able to see. Frank must be kept
wounded. He may lead us to Toma.

RICHARD
OK. I am not questioning.

MARSILIO
So we understand each other, as before. Yours is the
outer and mine the inner. Then we meet in the middle
and hold the temple. Capisce?

RICHARD
Yes. And Samantha? I am ready to be free of her.

MARSILIO
Patience, soon.

RICHARD
OK.

MARSILIO
Ciao.

MARSILIO hangs up the phone. CLAUDIA gets up and

walks over to MARSILIO.

CLAUDIA
I have reviewed the protocols for mesmerizing resem-
blance.

MARSILIO
Good. Here is the full compilation on the actress, Re-
becca Toma.
(handing her a flashdrive)
I have tagged the individuating gestures. Memorize
them. And remember, it is the feeling. Looks are only to

30
 suggest. Otherwise . . .

CLAUDIA
No chance to incubate a succubus, I know.

MARSILIO
Precisely. Don’t act. And avoid being photographed.

CLAUDIA
I know.

INT. BROOKLYN COLLEGE, CLASSROOM – AFTER-

NOON

Projected on the screen are stills from classic 70s horror films:
Zombie, Suspiria, The Exorcist II, Don’t Look Now. “To be is
to be cornered – E. M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered, 1979” is
written on the black board. As FRANK speaks, GARY arrives
outside the open door of the class and waits for the lecture to
finish.

FRANK
. . . so, many things happen in the 70s to transform the
horror genre. Present and premodern fears mix, birthing
scary movies which are more seedy, grim, but also more
artistic and religious. Criminal evil escapes the prison
of murder-mystery and revenge plots, making us see
through the eyes of killer and victim. Supernatural evil
is freed from the gothic frame, making viewers believe
again in the reality of the devil and other medieval su-
perstitions. If the 60s were about love, the spirit of the
70s is fear. Which means they are more horribly real,
more perversely in touch with the dark mystery. As
Cioran says at the end of the decade, “to be is to be cor-
nered.” And now we are cornered, out of time, so let’s
end there.

31
GARY watches FRANK slowly collect his papers as the stu-
dents shuffle past him out the door. The students seem less
than interested in the class. GARY approaches the desk.

FRANK
Hello. May I help you?

GARY
Professor Mastro, my name is Gary Thatcher. I’m in
media studies at NYU, working on cinema and mysti-
cism. I was hoping to talk to you about some of my ide-
as. I sent you an email a while back.

FRANK
Sorry, I don’t remember. What would you like to talk
about?

GARY
Well, it’s about the last scene of Forsaken. I figured it
out.

FRANK
Here we go again.

GARY
Will you hear me out?

FRANK
Not if what you are going to say has anything to do with
the Illuminati or Knights Templar.

GARY
More like St. Francis’s stigmata and the Shroud of Tu-
rin.

32
 FRANK
Look, I am sure your speculations are fascinating, but I
am not interested. I know what happened. I was there. It
was an accident. My cameraman was blinded for
Christ’s sake!

GARY
You filmed your imagination.

FRANK
(pausing)
Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Either way, it wasn’t me, I
didn’t do it. Ever heard the ancient skeptic expression
“ou mallon”? I’m with Pyrrho on this: no more.23

GARY
Please reconsider, maybe next week? I can prove it, but
need a few days. Not something I can send you.

FRANK
Sorry, uh . . . what was your name?

GARY
Gary, Gary Thatcher. And yes, I have heard of Pyrrho,
that we should be without opinions, saying about each
thing that it no more is than is not. So you cannot deny
it.

FRANK
Gary. Right. Like I said. Plus I am going out of town
soon.

GARY
Sorry to bother you.

33
 FRANK
It’s OK. I am working on something else now.

GARY
OK. Have a nice trip.

GARY walks out, disappointed but calm.

FRANK
Fucking Forsaken.

EXT. PARTY AT MAX SLEIMMAN’S HOUSE –

NIGHTIME

FRANK enters the party and walks out near the pool where
many people are gathered. He looks around, feeling out of
place, and eventually sees SAMANTHA, RICHARD, and
ROBERT standing near MAX and CAROL SLEIMAN, who
are being greeted and congratulated on MAX’s new film,
Kingdom of Night, a thriller set in the Middle East. He walks
over to join them, not saying anything until SAMANTHA no-
tices him and moves over with ROBERT to greet him.

SAMANTHA
Frank.

ROBERT
Dad.

FRANK
Congratulations, son. I am proud of you. Samantha. I
don’t believe it.

RICHARD comes over to join them.

34
 SAMANTHA
It is good to see you. Frank, this is Richard.

RICHARD
Great to finally meet you, Frank.

FRANK
Yes, it’s about time.

ROBERT
Let me introduce you to Max Sleiman.

ROBERT leads FRANK over to MAX and CAROL SLEI-

MAN. Behind them, near a bar where drinks are being served,
is CLAUDIA BRANDINI.

MAX
You have a very talented son.

FRANK
I am happy for his success. And congratulations to you.
I never saw that ending coming.

MAX
That was Carol’s idea.
(to Carol)
Carol, this Frank Mastro. Remember the horror movie
that gave you all those nightmares back in college?
Frank directed it.

FRANK starts to notice CLAUDIA in the distance.

CAROL
Really? I still remember that last scene. Well isn’t that
funny. Pleased to meet you.

35
FRANK smiles but appears distracted.

ROBERT
About the ending, Richard and Max are planning to re-
lease a personalized version of The Kingdom for home
viewing next year. Plots and scenes will change in real-
time based on personal history and preferences. The
movie will never be the same.

FRANK
That’s interesting. Excuse me, but I’m gonna grab a
drink.

FRANK walks over to the bar near CLAUDIA, who looks at

him and smiles politely. He notices and seems to recognize
something about her. He gets a drink and starts to walk away.
As he does, CLAUDIA walks slowly off in another direction.
FRANK walks away and sits down further off in the garden
by himself. He watches CLAUDIA move through the crowd
and pause near a vase of Narcissus flowers. She gazes into one
of the flowers and touches the petals as if counting them. As
she leans over to examine the flowers, the gold cross around
her neck catches the light and flashes powerfully in FRANK’s
eyes. FRANK is subtly dazed and we see his vision widen and
float in a strange way, zooming in on things from a perspec-
tive other than his head, conveying a sense of the dissolving of
perspective itself. His vision moves around the scene flashing
through a series of aspects of CLAUDIA’s image, as if her
form functions like a dark crystal refracting his awareness in
different directions at once. After the experience builds and
slows, we see FRANK’s feet as the camera continues panning
towards his own face, as if he is approaching the threshold of
seeing himself. As the camera gets closer to seeing his face,
someone calls his name. At first the voice is otherworldly, un-
recognizable, but it quickly changes to ROBERT’s voice.

36
 ROBERT
How’s it going?

FRANK
Oh, good, OK. I was just relaxing for a moment.

ROBERT
See something you like?

FRANK
I don’t know.

ROBERT
Anyway, Max asked me to invite you to join him in his
study a little later.

FRANK
Alright, thanks.

ROBERT
Let’s catch up later, OK?

FRANK
Sure, of course.

ROBERT walks off and FRANK gets up and moves over to

CLAUDIA. During the conversation, FRANK perspires.

FRANK
Excuse me, may I ask about your necklace? I happened
to notice it flashing in the light earlier.

CLAUDIA
It was talking to you?

37
 FRANK
Perhaps so.

CLAUDIA
It is a very old cross, given to me by my grandmother.
Inside is dust of a saint whose name I forget. Precious,
no?

FRANK
It is beautiful. You are not Romanian are you?

CLAUDIA
No, Italian. Like you I think?

FRANK
My grandparents were. How did you know?

CLAUDIA
A friend said you are Robert’s father. You must be
proud?

FRANK
Yes, of course. Not that it is simple.

CLAUDIA
No need to explain. Maybe I understand. A seed flowers
without the one who planted it. And this is sorrow and
joy.

FRANK
In this case, without and despite, and despite without.
So yes, you see.

CLAUDIA
Why did you think I was Romanian?

38
 FRANK
An old memory.

CLAUDIA
I am Roman. Is that close enough?

FRANK
Too close, actually.
(holding out his hand)
I am Frank, Frank Mastro.

CLAUDIA
And I am Emina.

FRANK
Pleased to meet you.
(shaking hands)

CLAUDIA
Frank, I would like to talk more. Maybe later? But now
Max wants to see me in his study and I can’t say no.

FRANK
Then I will go with you. We have the same invitation it
seems.

FRANK and CLAUDIA walk off together, chatting. On their

way back to the house, a maid approaches FRANK and offers
him a towel.
MAID
Sir?

For a moment FRANK is perplexed, but then takes the towel

and wipes his face. CLAUDIA smiles.

39
 FRANK
It is warm here.

CLAUDIA
Yes.

As the MAID walks off, she holds up the towel and looks cu-
riously at the impression of FRANK’s sweaty face.

INT. GARY AND ARIANA’S APARTMENT BUILDING –

LATE AT NIGHT

GARY sits intently before his computer in a dark room. We

see his face, illumined by the light of the screen, from the per-
spective of the screen. Different colors flash across his face
and glasses as we hear the sounds of beheading and other exe-
cution videos. He shows no signs of fear or flinching, but
looks impassive, calm, serene. There is a subtle glow around
the crown of his head, not obvious, but there to be noticed if
you think about it.

INT. PARTY AT MAX SLEIMMAN’S HOUSE –

NIGHTIME

FRANK and CLAUDIA walk through the house towards

MAX’s study. In the hallway they meet SAMANTHA,
RICHARD, and ROBERT. RICHARD and CLAUDIA acci-
dentally exchange a knowing glance. RICHARD kisses SA-
MANTHA goodnight.

RICHARD
Goodnight, darling. I’ll be home before too long.

SAMANTHA
OK, goodnight.

40
 ROBERT
Frank, I am driving Mom back. Would you like a lift?

FRANK
I think I’ll stay a little longer.

RICHARD
I’ll drive Frank back.

SAMANTHA
Goodbye, Frank.

FRANK
Goodbye.

INT. GARY AND ARIANA’S APARTMENT BUILDING –

LATE AT NIGHT

GARY sits down kneeling on a traditional Tibetan rug woven

with the image of a flayed man and bordered with severed
heads.24 He places both of his hands out in front of him on the
carpet, in line with the hands in the image. His feet are togeth-
er behind him. He leans forward, so that he is on all fours, and
pauses there in stillness, as if ready to be beheaded, and then
touches his forehead to the carpet. He then moves back to a
sitting position, raising his left and right hands as if they are
holding his head and a weapon, respectively. He does this en-
tire motion a total of four times. Each time he touches his head
to the carpet, the perspective of the camera zooms and shifts
in a way to indicate an inversion of perspective through his
head. A simple way to do this would be to shoot the down mo-
tion in POV and the return motion from a perspective above
the center of the carpet looking down. This would produce the
sensation of Gary’s vision as it were “passing through” the
carpet and popping out above his body after his head is sev-
ered by the gesture of bowing.

41
INT. PARTY AT MAX SLEIMMAN’S HOUSE –
NIGHTIME

MAX, CLAUDIA, RICHARD, and FRANK sit in FRANK’s

study in comfortable chairs facing each other in a cross pat-
tern. MAX is at the head position, CLAUDIA at the foot.
RICHARD is to MAX’s left and FRANK is to his right. On
the coffee table between them is a replica of The Black Obe-
lisk of Shalmaneser III.25

RICHARD
But Frank you gotta admit given the way technology is
headed, that the industry needs this. The old models of
aesthetic experience simply don’t fit our world any-
more, they don’t work. People don’t see like that today,
they can’t.

MAX
He’s right, Frank.

FRANK
Nope. Real cinema deepens vision, reflecting the mira-
cle that you are seeing. But this whole immersive neu-
rocinema business, it’s about self-absorption, numbness.
That’s what I hear when I see a kid in those goggles on
the subway, “Hello, is there anybody in there?”

CLAUDIA
Frank is right, from his perspective. But the issue is not
the technology itself, which is inevitable, but the pur-
pose for which a person uses it.

FRANK
Or is used by it.

42
 RICHARD
Like Socrates said, even writing produces forgetful-
ness.26 So the question is what you remember in forget-
ting, what dreams fill our sleep.

MAX
Take your idea, Frank, for a more spiritual film. Some
of the sequencing algorithms Richard’s people are
working with have the potential to induce psychedelic
states. This is the real deal.

FRANK
The fact that you make that equation shows that you re-
ally don’t see what I am talking about. But we don’t
need to understand each other. Who is we anyway?

CLAUDIA
Gentlemen, I think it’s time to turn this philosophy cir-
cle into a spiral. Would anyone care to dance?

RICHARD
Spoken like a true lady.

MAX
You go on ahead, I’ll see to the music.

FRANK
I’ll dance with you Emina. Not like I have anything to
lose.

CLAUDIA winks, gets up and whispers to MAX, who puts on

an old Italian song. FRANK and CLAUDIA dance around the
room nonchalantly. MAX and RICHARD chat inaudibly about
something and look on. As they dance FRANK continues to
notice CLAUDIA’s cross. CLAUDIA smiles and at one point
winks to RICHARD without FRANK or MAX noticing.

43
CLAUDIA winks at FRANK, causing FRANK to see a kind
of flash and image of a face which is like REBECCA TOMA’s
but also somehow demonic, as with the face similar to AS-
TRA’s which FRANK saw in the photograph of his tears.

INT. GARY AND ARIANA’S APARTMENT BUILDING –

LATE AT NIGHT

GARY, changed into a white shirt, sits before his desk. He

calmly and deliberately adjusts a webcam on a small stand and
stares into its lens. He then removes a gun from the drawer of
his desk and places it on the desk to his right, keeping his
hand on it. The camera zooms out, so that we see GARY from
behind, with his head blocking our view of the camera he is
looking into. He slowly reaches to press record with his left
hand and we see the red glow of the recording signal light cre-
ate an aura around the silhouette of his head.

EXT. LOS ANGELES, RICHARD’S CAR – MIDNIGHT

RICHARD and CLAUDIA are driving FRANK back to his

hotel. FRANK sits in the back seat.

RICHARD
Sorry you couldn’t stay in town longer, Frank.

FRANK
That’s OK, this party will do me for a while.

CLAUDIA
You know, Frank, they might tease you about being ide-
alistic and old fashioned, but I know you are the real
thing. The world needs more thrilling divine romance.
When I get home, I am going to watch Forsaken.

44
 FRANK
Well it is a horror movie, not much romance, not on
screen anyway.

CLAUDIA
The best kind.27
(turning around to face him)
It was marvelous to meet you.

FRANK
Yes, it is astonishing, to see you . . .
(leaning back on the headrest and closing his eyes)
again.

RICHARD sees FRANK close his eyes in the rear view mirror
and turns and smiles to CLAUDIA. FRANK remains as if
sinking towards sleep while the car speeds through the night.
A noise emerges, increasing in volume – the sound of an air-
plane.

INT/EXT. KENNEDY AIRPORT – EARLY EVENING

FRANK opens his eyes as his airplane lands in JFK Airport.

He walks out of baggage to get a taxi. The scene is shot to
echo visually the arrival of Suzy Banyon at Munich airport in
Argento’s Suspiria. Where Suzy left from Kennedy airport,
FRANK arrives there into a Suspiria-esque environment: col-
ored lighting, woman in red, rain and wind, creepy automatic
doors [cinematic decapitation motif], laconic cabbie, etc. This
is done to suggest the idea of a fluid interface between cinema
and reality, and with it FRANK’s departure from his routine
life.

INT. FRANK MASTRO’S APARTMENT – NIGHT

FRANK gets home, pours himself a whiskey, and puts For-

45
saken on to watch. We see the opening shot with title, then he
fast-forwards to the final scene. In Forsaken’s final shot, the
Satanic witch Cinnaedea, played by REBECCA TOMA, in
order to gain immortal life, decapitates herself with a sword,
spurting blood into the mouths of two young acolytes and her
own severed head. Then, as her attendants whisper strange
hymns, Cinnaedea’s body slowly becomes young again, picks
up its head, and walks away. We watch FRANK watch the
scene from behind his head, noticing his subtle reactive
movements stimulated by some hidden memories of the event.
The scene is shot in a forest at dawn, producing fluctuations in
light as bodies move in front of the sun. But there is at least
one other subtle flash on the film which occurs at the moment
of decapitation. FRANK re-examines the scene, pausing and
replaying certain frames. Each time he sees certain moments,
his face and neck and left arm flinch and/or twitch, indicating
the presence of some kind of deep psychic tethering to the
images, as if his present vision is wired to that scene but some
kind of subtle imaginal nerve. This fascinates but also freaks
him out, drawing him back to Gary’s notion that he filmed his
imagination. That is, just as he filmed his imagination, the
film image is like a sensitive extension of his body. Exhausted,
he falls asleep amid a montage of memories of the opening
“dream” sequence, Forsaken, and his recent experiences in
L.A.

INT. CHURCH IN BROOKLYN, NY – PREDAWN

Very close close-up of SISTER CONNELLY alone at her

morning prayers. Her head covering is worn low on her fore-
head. There are indications that she is in a state of ecstasy. Her
pose is very still. Her eyes are half closed, watery, and partial-
ly back in her head. Her mouth is slightly open and silently
sighing. She finishes her prayers and returns to a more normal
state. She places her rosary in her pocket and takes out a
handkerchief, with which she very discreetly wipes the pew in

46
a few places. Putting her handkerchief away, which looks
stained, she gets up and walks away, pulling her sleeves down
over her hands as she goes.

INT. FRANK MASTRO’S APARTMENT – DAWN

He wakes right before dawn, sees the time on the alarm clock,
4:20 AM, and then falls back to sleep. Very slowly, a young
REBECCA TOMA, wearing Jordache jeans28 and a t-shirt
with no bra, walks into his bedroom and sits on the bed next to
him, placing her hand on his head. He wakes and she lays on
top of him. They gaze into each other’s eyes and REBECCA’s
eyes fill with tears. Slowly she starts to cry and sob, dripping
tears onto Frank’s face. As he begins to taste and open his
mouth to catch her tears, her sobbing becomes more sensual
and she presses her body onto him as if sexually aroused.
Tears and saliva drip from her face in slow rapture. The fluid
fills FRANK’s mouth and he begins to be unable to breathe.
As REBECCA gazes into him, FRANK seems paralyzed, un-
able to move, as per the classic astral presentation of the incu-
bus/succubus.29 He breaks the spell and wakes in his bedroom
at 6:00 am, staring into space.

INT/EXT. MAUSOLEUM – EARLY MORNING

CLAUDIA and ROBERT sit together inside a pyramidal mau-

soleum. RICHARD’s clothes are placed on a small altar at the
back of the chamber, next to which are steps leading down to a
crypt of some kind. There is a sound of running water. Semi-
verbal sighs and moans, of pain and pleasure, echo from be-
low, along with the pulse of a strobe light.

CLAUDIA
There is nothing to fear. She gives nothing but your
own self.

47
 ROBERT
What am I to do?

CLAUDIA
Only whatever comes natural. As you please.

ROBERT
And afterwards?

CLAUDIA
You will feel new strength, more life. No one else will
know.

ROBERT
May I have the record?

CLAUDIA
No. Signor Barbi will do the reading. In later years he
may teach you. Now you must only listen, carefully.

ROBERT
OK.

CLAUDIA
And beware the desire to return here. It will feel over-
powering, but you would lose double what you gain. To
open the Sibyl without the key is forbidden.

The sounds and lights from below cease and RICHARD re-
turns to CLAUDIA, handing her a large crystal key. He is na-
ked, sweaty, with some signs of blood and marks on his body.
CLAUDIA looks to ROBERT, who then disrobes. CLAUDIA
hands ROBERT the key.

CLAUDIA
Seven minutes.

48
INT. CONVENT IN BROOKLYN, NY – EARLY MORN-
ING30

SISTER CONNELLY sits at the small desk in her private

room. She picks up a small knife and carefully scrapes black-
ish dried blood from a handkerchief onto a piece of paper,
which she then examines under a magnifying glass. Folding
the piece of paper, she guides the blood-dust into a glass bottle
which is already half full and tucks it away in her garments.

INT. COLLEGE, FRANK MASTRO’S CLASS – LATE

MORNING

As class lets out, two men, DETECTIVES LAND and

RAMIREZ, approach FRANK’s desk.

DETECTIVE LAND
Professor Mastro?

FRANK
Yes?

DETECTIVE LAND
I am Detective Land and this is Detective Ramirez. We
would like to ask you a few questions, if that’s alright
with you.

FRANK
Is everything OK?

DETECTIVE LAND
Well, that’s what we are trying to figure out. Do you
know a person by the name of Gary Thatcher?

FRANK
I met him last week. He approached me after class,

49
 wanted to talk to me about his research, in media stud-
ies.

DETECTIVE LAND
I see.

DETECTIVE RAMIREZ
Do you know where he is now?

FRANK
No. I left him a message early this morning and was
hoping to meet with him today.

DETECTIVE LAND
Yes, we heard that message. What did you mean that
“something strange happened?”

FRANK
Oh, I was referring to an experience I had, which I
thought he would be interested in.

DETECTIVE RAMIREZ
Could you be more specific?

FRANK
Well it is not very easy to explain, more of a . . . spiritu-
al experience.

DETECTIVE LAND
I see. Can you tell us where you were as of last Friday?

FRANK
Sure, I was in Los Angeles to attend a movie opening. I
left Friday and I got into Kennedy last night.

RAMIREZ whispers to LAND

50
 DETECTIVE LAND
Professor, those are all the questions we have for you
today. If you should hear from Gary Thatcher, please let
us know immediately. Here is my card. He has disap-
peared under unusual circumstances.

FRANK
What do you mean?

DETECTIVE RAMIREZ
We are not at liberty to discuss the details with you. Is
there a number where we can reach you if necessary?

FRANK
Here is my cell number.

He writes the number down on the top of a piece of scrap pa-

per with the photocopy of an image on the other side, tears the
paper, and hands it to the detectives.

DETECTIVE LAND
Thank you.

The detectives exit and Frank looks at the torn sheet of paper,
turning it over to see what was on the other side. It is the pic-
ture of a 70s horror actress, like Madeline Smith, posing with
a bicycle. He has torn the head off.

EXT. OUTSIDE FRANK’S COLLEGE – MIDDAY

On the street, as FRANK is exiting campus, ARIANA FOX

calls out and runs up to him.

ARIANA
Professor Mastro?

51
 FRANK
Yes.

ARIANA
My name is Ariana. I am Gary’s girlfriend, Gary
Thatcher. Did the police speak with you?

FRANK
Yes, earlier today.

ARIANA
Oh, good. I don’t know what to do. I am really worried,
but can’t imagine that Gary would kill himself.

FRANK
Kill himself?

ARIANA
The detectives showed you the video right?

FRANK
No, what video?

ARIANA
I thought they were going to show you. Gary made it,
for you. OK, we need to talk. Can you come to our
apartment? Maybe you can help me figure out where he
is.

FRANK
OK.

EXT/INT. ARIANA AND GARY’S APARTMENT BUILD-

ING

They arrive at Gary and Ariana’s apartment. ARIANA shows

52
FRANK Gary’s desk.

ARIANA
Can I get you a drink or something?
(she lights a cigarette)
Sorry but I am little over the edge right now.

FRANK
Sit down and tell me what happened.

They sit.

ARIANA
When I came home late at night on Friday, Gary wasn’t
here. I called everyone, but his phone is here and no-
body has seen him. Next morning I find the video, freak
out, and call the police.

FRANK
Can I see the video?

ARIANA
It’s on his computer. The file is named “Forsake Me.”
It’s awful. But first I have to tell you that it can’t be re-
al. Even though it looks . . . too real.

Frank gets the laptop, places it on the coffee table, and we get
to watch it as if sitting between FRANK and ARIANA. In the
video, GARY is sitting before his computer screen. He says,
“Alright, let’s try this again. Frank Mastro, this is for you, for
Forsaken. You showed me the way!” Gary then picks up a
gun, winks at the camera, and shoots himself in the head. We
see the spray of blood, the body collapses, and then the clip
ends. FRANK winces, pours himself a drink.

53
 ARIANA
The police were all over the place and they couldn’t
find any trace of blood, and no gun. It’s like what he
shot only happened on the video.

FRANK
I don’t understand. Maybe he just faked it. Special ef-
fects.

ARIANA
That’s what the cops said. It was uploaded early Friday
morning to a pseudocide forum.

FRANK
Pseudocide forum?

ARIANA
Yeah, a website where people post fake suicide videos.
Gary showed me some a while ago. Some are not. So-
cial media gone memento mori in a sick way.

FRANK
The more we represent ourselves, the more we want to
kill ourselves. I get it. So that proves he is OK, if he up-
loaded the video.

ARIANA
But there are no signs of editing. The video is coded as
recorded with a timer. And Gary is not here, I just don’t
get it.

FRANK
Like he survived his own suicide by disappearing. That
is mad. There must be an explanation.

54
 ARIANA
You tell me! Gary is obsessed with your film. He must
have done what he said you did.

FRANK
Let’s take a step back. Can you tell me about his re-
search?

ARIANA
He’s studying premodern theories of the imagination
and the cinematic nature of consciousness. Like the idea
of seeing your whole life flash before your eyes at
death. That goes way back.

FRANK
Interesting. Are you in school too?

ARIANA
No, more of a lost poet, unfinished auto-documentary.
Gary and I met in Rome last summer when he was on
fellowship. What an adventure that was, is. Total “al di
lá.”

FRANK
I can imagine. So how does Forsaken fit in?

ARIANA
Forsäkken. Gary likes to say like that, as if it were a
black metal band, which it also is.

FRANK
Truth stranger than truth.

ARIANA
He is a huge horror fan, since he was little, always fas-
cinated by the spectacle of death. That led to mysticism,

55
 Georges Bataille and so forth. It’s the idea of martyr-
dom he’s into. No seeing without dying.

FRANK
I understand. The eye of death and the death of the I.
That’s what I wanted to channel in Forsaken, through
the eyes of the saints.

ARIANA
Well you certainly channeled something.

FRANK
And I still can’t shake the damned thing. It’s like the
Pope’s murder cursed the film into believing in me with
a faith I couldn’t live with.

ARIANA
On his seventh birthday Gary’s parents—God knows
why—let him watch The Exorcist. He calls it his ‘first
communion’. Says it was like a hidden switch flipped in
his mind and horror flicks were never frightening again
because he knew they were real. I think he is searching
for something to put the fear back in him.

FRANK
Mind if I look around his desk?

ARIANA
Please. There’s some gory stuff there. Gary is fearless
that way. Watches all the beheading videos without
moving a muscle. Stiller than fucking Sir Gawain.

FRANK looks around Gary’s desk. There is a bulletin board

with a constellation of items which the camera pans through:
the print-out of a newspaper headline for the death of Pope
John Paul I in 1978, the film poster for Forsaken, an article

56
about P2 (Propaganda Due), an etching of Plato’s Allegory of
the Cave, the Templecombe Head,31 a painting of the Veroni-
ca, photograph of the Shroud of Turin,32 a painting of St. Den-
is picking up his own head,33 a recent article about Oculus
Media and neurocinema research, a screenshot of the behead-
ing scene from The Omen (1976),34 detail of the medieval im-
age of the beheading of St. Albans (showing the headsman’s
eyes popping out),35 a colored diagram for visualizing four
dimensions from Charles Howard Hinton’s The Fourth Di-
mension (1904),36 a renaissance engraving of Narcissus before
his reflection, various pictures of stigmatics, a Chinese be-
heading photograph, and at the center of them all, the Chin-
namasta icon.37 Next to that is a page from the Spiritual Exer-
cises of Ignatius of Loyola, showing the diagram of a hand.38
FRANK reaches out instinctively to touch it, and we see a
flash of the moment of the opening vision of the Pope’s mur-
der when one of the THREE FIGURES places the parchment
in his side. On the desk are a variety of esoteric, horror, and
conspiracy theory books: David Yallop’s In God’s Name, Bon-
aventure’s Journey of the Mind into God, Peter Levenda’s Sin-
ister Forces, Douglas Harding’s On Having No Head,39 Ram-
sey Campbell’s The Nameless,40 etc.

FRANK
Has Gary been talking to anyone else recently about his
research? A lot of this stuff seems rather outside the
realm of media studies.

ARIANA
Just to me, and to his advisor, Thomas Berg. He doesn’t
really hang out with other people that much. Oh, and
Sister Connelly, a nun in Brooklyn. She wrote the book
there on the right, As a Seal Upon Thy Heart.

We see the book title and cover, showing an image of the five
wounds of Christ, a bleeding sacred heart in the middle, with

57
an eye in its center.41

Gary met with her several times last month, right after
we came back from Rome. The book tries to explain the
stigmata miracle scientifically, how in ecstasy the mind
can imprint a body with its vision.

FRANK
I know this is really hard, Ariana. But the video looks
real. Maybe Gary wanted out and had an accomplice, to
spare you finding his body. I have heard of people doing
that.

ARIANA
That’s impossible. Gary wouldn’t! There is no note or
message. And in the video he is trying it again, like it’s
a stunt.

FRANK
Well he must be somewhere.

ARIANA
That is why I came to you. He is not dead and I need to
find out what is going on.

FRANK
OK, right. I have to admit that this is not the first inex-
plicable thing I have witnessed in my life.

They sit in silence for a little while, long enough for the view-
er to feel uncomfortable, generating a sense of the uncanny
presence of the world to itself.

FRANK
What are you doing tomorrow? Maybe we could talk to
Sister Connelly.

58
 ARIANA
I will try to make an appointment.

FRANK
I also want to understand what Gary knows.

ARIANA
Yes, I can see that.

EXT/INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE –

PRE-DAWN

Shot from afar, showing mountain landscape, then zooming in.

Upstairs the revelry of a group of young professionals is run-
ning out of steam in a luxury bar room. Downstairs, in a small
basement room, GARY THATCHER is being startled awake
by glaring lights and loud discordant music in the small room
where he is being held against his will. After half a minute or
so of the sleep-depriving torture, TWO MEN in black ski
masks enter the room with a cappuccino and pastry, standing
there as he slowly eats and drinks. One of the TWO MEN
walks outside to turn the music off, then returns. Gary finishes
the breakfast and looks up at them.

EXT. BROOKLYN STREET – MIDDAY

FRANK and ARIANA walking to meet Sister Connelly.

FRANK
What did Gary tell you about his meetings with Sister
Connelly.

ARIANA
Not much. But I get the feeling their conversations were
intense. He was always quiet, withdrawn afterwards in a
weird way.

59
 FRANK
How did he meet her?

ARIANA
Through her book, which he found in Rome. Seems it
was pretty controversial, in 1987, the Church not liking
having its mysteries explained and all.

FRANK
1987?

ARIANA
Yes, why?

FRANK
Oh, nothing, an old memory. Like the whole autopsy
question surrounding the Pope’s body in ‘78. Some
things you just don’t pry into.

INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – EARLY

MORNING

The TWO MEN place a hood over his head, restrain his hands
with a plastic tie, and lead him to another room with a desk.
On the other side of the desk sits MARSILIO BARBI, wear-
ing a green suit.

MARSILIO
Buon giorno, Gary. I hope the cappuccino was to your
tastes.

GARY
Yes, it was delicious.

MARSILIO
So, what would you like to tell us today?

60
 GARY
I can talk about my dissertation, the chapter on Bona-
venture. I bet you have even heard of Bonaventure.

MARSILIO
Bonaventura da Bagnoregio, of course. I have also seen
your article on the Franciscan concept of the phantasm
in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Impressive.42

GARY
Precisely.

MARSILIO
Being clever won’t help you here. Eventually you tell
us what we want to know. There will be no choice.

GARY
And what is that? Please tell me, so I can tell you, and
we can get out of here.

MARSILIO
Let me refresh your memory.

INT/EXT. CONVENT IN BROOKLYN – MIDDAY

SISTER CONNELLY sits in her room, wrapped in a blue

shawl, staring catatonically into space. A NUN knocks on the
door and pokes her head in the room.

NUN
Sister Connelly. There are two people outside in the
garden waiting to see you.
(after the lack of a response)
Sister Connelly?

61
 SISTER CONNELLY
I am coming.

SISTER CONNELLY walks out to the grounds in the back of

the convent, where she finds FRANK and ARIANA sitting on
benches waiting for her. She walks up to them, but does not
say anything.

ARIANA
Sister Connelly?

SISTER CONNELLY looks at FRANK and ARIANA as if

scrutinizing them, maybe reading their minds. FRANK and
ARIANA look puzzled. After a few moments SISTER CON-
NELLY nods and almost smiles.

ARIANA
Sister Connelly, I am Ariana. And this is Frank, Frank
Mastro. How are you today?

SISTER CONNELLY
Hello Ariana. Aryan, noble. I am Sister Connelly. Con-
ghal, wolf-fierce. And about Gary, he is OK. Do not
worry.

ARIANA
He is? How do you know? Thank God.

SISTER CONNELLY
Anything else?

FRANK
Sister, do you know where Gary is?

SISTER CONNELLY starts to drift away into the garden.

FRANK and ARIANA follow.

62
 SISTER CONNELLY
Gary, gar, spear . . . He is one who . . .

BEGIN FLASHBACK – SERIES OF SHOTS:

A) GARY and SISTER CONNELLY sitting in the com-

mon area of the convent.
B) GARY and SISTER CONNELLY walking in the con-
vent grounds.
C) SISTER CONNELLY placing her hands on GARY’s
head.
D) GARY swooning to the ground and shaking as SIS-
TER CONNELLY prays her rosary in the background.
E) SISTER CONNELLY leading GARY back to the
church.
F) GARY alone in the church. He prays, crosses himself,
and then removes a small phial containing a blackish
powder, which he pours into his mouth.

SISTER CONNELLY (V.O.) (cont’d)

. . . how can I say? Everything true is clouded.
Knowledge is nothing. I used to think . . . Now no ques-
tion makes sense. Not one. Gary wanted answers. But
the wounds are only five. He is learning to count. I have
done my duty. Secretum meum mihi, my secret to my-
self.

SISTER CONNELLY stops walking and stares at FRANK.

SISTER CONNELLY
Yes?

FRANK
Secret? What do you mean?

63
 SISTER CONNELLY
Secret, you know, sacred, something set apart, severed.
Like the Indian saints who dismember themselves at
will.43 What is one in four dimensions looks separated
in three.44

ARIANA
Sister, please, I must find Gary. If you know anything
that might help, tell us.

SISTER CONNELLY
Information is zero, zero, and zero. Remember what the
dead abbess used to tell me? To find you must follow.
To follow you must see. To see you must look. To look
you must search . . . where he is – your heart.

FRANK, who has been staring at SISTER CONNELLY be-

gins to feel a little faint. He moves over to a bench as ARIA-
NA reaches to help him. SISTER CONNELLY comes over
and sits between them.

SISTER CONNELLY
Frank, Francis, free, frank. I don’t think this one can
keep a secret!

FRANK
I’m OK, just a little tired.

SISTER CONNELLY
I am too.

SISTER CONNELLY places her hands on the side of

FRANK’s head and looks into his eyes, then more intensely,
as if gazing at something far away. FRANK closes his eyes,
then she closes hers. We zoom in to SISTER CONNELLY’S
face and eyes, through the middle of her forehead, then into

64
the star-filled blackness of her skull.

EXT. DESERT IN SYRIA DESERT – MIDDAY

Two TEMPLAR KNIGHTS ride side by side on horses

through a desert landscape. They are tired and haggard. The
KNIGHT on the left speaks first.

LEFT TEMPLAR
The order is lost. It is time to seek protection of the se-
cret from the Five, at the White Castle.

RIGHT TEMPLAR
We must not! No one knows what might become of it.
Their charge is black, beyond discernment.

LEFT TEMPLAR
Yes, but only thus will the truth be saved.

RIGHT TEMPLAR
I fear what they are capable of. It will be our damna-
tion!

LEFT TEMPLAR
Salvation? I do not care for it. Our city is Roma, Amor,
the Eternal City! And Paul says to the Romans, “I have
great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I
wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from
Christ for the sake of my brethren.”

RIGHT TEMPLAR
You are right. There is no greater love.45

The camera pans into the blue sky. The blue sky fades into the
blue of SISTER CONNELLY’s habit. The camera moves at
close range along SISTER CONNELLY’s arms and towards

65
her hands which she is still holding on FRANK’s temples. The
camera passes through the back of SISTER CONNELLY’s left
hand and enters the blackness of FRANK’s head, wherein a
play of colors, similar to the flames flickering over the corpses
in the opening scene, begin to appear.

EXT/INT. A CASTLE IN A DESERT LANDSCAPE – SUN-

SET

The TEMPLAR KNIGHTS arrive before a square castle re-

sembling Chastel Blanc in Safita, Syria,46 but considerably
smaller, more like a shrine. It looks to be the same as the one
in the opening scene. The entrance is flanked by two large
columns, capped with large stone spheres. They dismount and
stand gazing at it. A young BOY sits on the front steps, play-
ing with an azure ball. He stands and approaches the knights.

RIGHT TEMPLAR
Tell your master that we seek protection of the essence
of our Order.

The BOY walks into the castle, then returns.

BOY
Master says, “The salt of your life will not flow to the
sea, the dust of the Order will not be scattered, the head
of your Head shall never die.”47 Follow me and make
the offering. Enter by the only way.

The BOY enters the castle. The TEMPLARS embrace, give

each other the kiss of peace, and unsheathe their swords.

RIGHT AND LEFT TEMPLAR

(in unison and grasping each other’s arms)
Nesciat sinistra tua quid faciat dextera tua.

66
The LEFT TEMPLAR gets on his knees and bows his head
forward with arms outstretched towards the east. The RIGHT
TEMPLAR beheads him. As the head falls, the LEFT TEM-
PLAR catches it in his hands, showing us the reflection of the
sun in its eyes. Then, the LEFT TEMPLAR stands and the
RIGHT TEMPLAR kneels facing the west. The LEFT TEM-
PLAR, holding his head in his left hand, decapitates the
RIGHT TEMPLAR. The RIGHT TEMPLAR catches his head
and stands facing the sun. The TEMPLAR KNIGHTS enter
the castle side by side, holding hands and their severed
heads.48 We see the outline of one of the FIVE FIGURES be-
hind an altar and the TEMPLARS kneeling to offer their heads
as the screen becomes brilliant with light and sound.

EXT. CONVENT IN BROOKLYN – MIDDAY

SISTER CONNELLY swoons, gazing upward with a sigh and

releasing FRANK’s head as ARIANA holds her.

ARIANA
Sister, are you OK?

SISTER CONNELLY
Yes, dear.

SISTER CONNELLY reaches for a handkerchief to wipe the

sweat from FRANK’s brow. FRANK looks dazed. As she does
so we see that there are a few small drops of blood, where her
hands had been, among the beads of sweat which she wipes
away inconspicuously.

ARIANA
What were you doing?

SISTER CONNELLY
Listening.

67
 ARIANA
Frank, are you OK?

FRANK
Yes. Just felt a little faint that’s all. Then for some rea-
son, when I closed my eyes, it seemed that I was home,
not here. Did I fall asleep?

ARIANA
No, we’ve just been sitting and conversing.

FRANK
I don’t understand . . . half remember something. A
dream, except that I was neither dreaming nor in it. Like
a movie.

SISTER CONNELLY
Did you see something?

FRANK
I don’t know. What were we talking about? I feel, I
don’t know . . . like I died when it stopped.

ARIANA
When what stopped?

FRANK and SISTER CONNELLY

(simultaneously)
I don’t know.

A NUN from the convent approaches.

NUN
Sister Connelly, you are asked for in the refectory.

SISTER CONNELLY nods slowly and the NUN walks away.

68
 SISTER CONNELLY
To see headlessly, with the eye of heart, walking in that
spiral sphere, what is there to say? It is like a fourth di-
mension. Wound of everything, never healing.

ARIANA
Please, before you go, is there anything you can tell us
about Gary. I am so worried. It is not like him to disap-
pear like this.

SISTER CONNELLY stands up.

SISTER CONNELLY
And to appear? There is no one to worry about.

FRANK
What did you mean that Gary is learning to count?

SISTER CONNELLY
The fire he has swallowed is perilous, beyond control.
Perilous, from per, to risk, try. He must now experience.

ARIANA and FRANK stand up. ARIANA kisses SISTER

CONNELLY’s hands.

ARIANA
Pray for him.

SISTER CONNELLY
All shall be well.49 This is only shadow, a reflection, the
speculation of Whoever is looking into it.
(taking her necklace and placing it over ARIANA’s
head)
From speculare, to look into a mirror.

69
 ARIANA
What is this?

ARIANA opens the small pendant on the necklace and sees

that it contains a negative image of the face from the Shroud
of Turin.

SISTER CONNELLY
A trinket, a trick, from tricari, to be evasive – ‘tis an
image trapped once in the darkroom of a heart.

ARIANA
Thank you. I will keep it, for Gary.

SISTER CONNELLY
I would say that it will protect you, but who needs that?
Go in peace.

SISTER CONNELLY turns and exits as a siren sounds in the

near distance.

INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – EARLY

MORNING

Begin with a moment of taut silence during which MARSILIO

stares fiercely at GARY, who is still hooded.

MARSILIO
(becoming increasingly menacing)
Dio bono! You think we don’t know what happened?
You have no idea who you are dealing with. The Holy
Father dies of a “heart attack.” Forsaken’s final scene is
filmed, with uncanny mastery on the same night, the
very hour! Thirty-nine years later, Mastro-fanboy here
visits the Vatican Library to examine marginalia in the
Pope’s copy of the Spiritual Exercises, a unique edition,

70
translated into Italian not from Ignatius’s original but
from the much expanded Cypriot Maronite Arabic ver-
sion.50 See, I know my shit! Three weeks later, the bril-
liant student does something most dumb. Posts a suicide
video to an internet forum, a video bearing how shall
we say, certain unmistakable signatures which only an-
other party can recognize. How do you think we found
you? Now stop lying and tell us how the fuck you made
that video!
(pulling off Gary’s hood)

GARY
I don’t know. It is not possible to explain how.

MARSILIO
You mean how you did it. So you admit to knowing the
secret.

GARY
My secret to myself, woe is me. So fuck off! I can’t tell
you anything, nothing.

MARSILIO
We will bring it to the surface. There is nothing which
the human tongue, or brain, cannot tell.

GARY
Obviously you don’t know shit, whoever you think you
are.

MARSILIO
I am a man in green. That is all you will know. Take
twenty-four hours to think on your sins and change your
mind. After that, the pain begins. And there is no greater
pain than seeing your love suffer.

71
EXT. MANHATTAN BRIDGE – AFTERNOON

FRANK and ARIANA walk slowly across the bridge towards

Manhattan.

ARIANA
Are you OK?

FRANK
I don’t know. I feel strange.

ARIANA
Strange how?

FRANK
I don’t know. Anything I say will be wrong.

ARIANA
Well say anything and let it be wrong. The whole world
is.

FRANK
You said it. I feel totally relieved and like garbage at the
same time. I’d jump off the bridge now, were I not so
afraid that I would fly.

ARIANA
To have never wanted less to want anything.

FRANK
To have wasted your entire life, until now. The moment
everyone seeks and fears, knowing that it never stops
happening. If you don’t see that, you haven’t seen any-
thing.

72
 ARIANA
Death by individuation?51

FRANK
Maybe salvation is no one to save.52

ARIANA
Do you believe what Sister Connelly says is true?

FRANK
It doesn’t matter.

ARIANA
Whether you believe or whether it is true?

FRANK
Both. But we will find Gary, don’t worry.

ARIANA
What is the matter with everything?

FRANK
Nothing. Nothing at all. That’s the problem.

FRANK and ARIANA arrive at the center of the bridge. They

look out toward the Brooklyn Bridge and see a sailboat nearby
drifting dead in the water. Some police boats are approaching
it. This should evoke, but not directly refer to, the opening
scene in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979).53

ARIANA
Seems that something is the matter with that boat down
there.

FRANK
There is no one on it.

73
 (pause)
Last time I walked across that bridge was with Astra.

They begin walking again, noticing a MAN in the distance

who seems to be following them.

ARIANA
Is that man following us?

FRANK
No, I don’t think so.
(pause)
We played a counting game stepping on the wooden
slats. She called it Peak-a-Byss.

ARIANA
Smart cookie. How did she die?

FRANK
In 1987, three days after her mother came to live with
us.

ARIANA
She was the actress in Forsaken?

FRANK
Yes.

BEGIN FLASHBACK:

EXT. MANHATTAN STREET – DAYTIME

ASTRA walks with FRANK and REBECCA on a busy Man-

hattan street in 1987. The scene is shot around the child’s per-
spective, with the heads of FRANK and REBECCA out of
frame, virtually beheaded. FRANK produces a bouquet of

74
Narcissus flowers from behind his back for REBECCA.

FRANK
For you!

REBECCA
Narcissus! My favorite. I can’t believe it. That I am re-
ally here, that we are here. I love New York. I love you!

FRANK
What to say? I love you too. Everything is going to
work now, I feel it. She is so happy.

REBECCA
I know. And you, “Doctor” Mastro, where will you take
me tonight?

FRANK
Anywhere.

INT. CAB OF A TRUCK ON A MANHATTAN STREET –

DAYTIME
Two men, DRIVER and PASSENGER, drive down a Manhat-
tan avenue.

PASSENGER
Man, what is it with you and directions?

DRIVER
Nothing. I was right back there. This is the way.

PASSENGER
Right.

EXT. MANHATTAN STREET – DAYTIME

75
 ASTRA
Look Dad! Mom look!
(ASTRA slows and starts to point back behind her)

REBECCA
(noticing an advertisement on a passing bus)
How about Windows on the World?54

FRANK
Super. We will go to the new room, Cellar in the Sky.
(winks)

REBECCA
Perfect!
(winks)

ASTRA
Look! Look at that man. He is not wearing any shoes.

ASTRA falls behind FRANK and REBECCA as they begin to

enter a crosswalk, absorbed in their own conversation. AS-
TRA hangs back to look at something behind her. FRANK and
REBECCA keep walking forward out of the frame. ASTRA
turns around to look for her parents and then dashes into the
crosswalk to catch up with them.

INT. CAB OF A TRUCK ON A MANHATTAN STREET –

DAYTIME

PASSENGER
OK, at the next street, turn left.

DRIVER
It’s one-way the wrong way. I am going straight.

76
 PASSESENGER
It doesn’t matter. Do you see the traffic ahead? Turn
right!

DRIVER
OK, taking it, pulling right.

The DRIVER makes a quick turn right through the intersec-

tion.

EXT. CROSSWALK – DAYTIME

ASTRA is killed by the truck as she rushes forward through

the crosswalk, stepping only on the white paint. We see her
hair spread out on the street from under the wheel that comes
to a sudden stop on her crushed skull. REBECCA and
FRANK hear a scream and turn around from the other end of
the crosswalk and we see them run forward, this time showing
the backs of their heads, but not their faces. REBECCA col-
lapses near ASTRA’s corpse and FRANK falls to his knees in
shock.

END FLASHBACK.

EXT. MANHATTAN BRIDGE – AFTERNOON

FRANK and ARIANA coming to the end of the bridge in Chi-

natown.

ARIANA
God, I am so sorry.

FRANK
What to say?

INT. CONVENT IN BROOKLYN – EARLY EVENING

77
SISTER CONNELLY moves restlessly around her room and
then falls to the floor. Then she sits up, weeping and rocking
her body. She removes the veil from her head, revealing a star-
like scab in the middle of her forehead.55 The weeping and
rocking intensifies, until she begins to bang her forehead on
the floor, beneath the crucifix in her room, where a stone pro-
trudes from the floor a little above the others. She bangs her
head a total of seven times. With the first thud, we see a flash
of a black pyramid. With the second thud, we enter the interior
of the pyramid, as shown in the opening scene, with a pattern
of dots of light projected on its sides. With the third thud, the
projection shifts to show the beheaded TEMPLAR KNIGHTS
entering the white shrine/castle. With the fourth thud, the pro-
jection shifts, with a flash of patterned dots, to show the be-
heading by guillotine of King Louis XVI, with a man (as per
the legend) raising the head and shouting, “Jacques de Molay,
thou art avenged!”56 With the fifth thud, the projection shifts,
with a flash of patterned dots, to show the first kinetoscope
images by Thomas Edison, in which the splicing of the frames
produces deformations of the figures suggestive of decapita-
tion.57 With the sixth thud, the projection shifts, with a flash of
patterned dots, to show the blinding of Frank’s cameraman Sol
while shooting the final scene of Forsaken. With the seventh
thud, we see a suicide bomber detonate himself near the en-
trance to a small white Sufi shrine with traditional green trim.
As his severed head lands on the ground, SISTER CONNEL-
LEY falls silent, stops her headbanging, wipes the blood from
her forehead, replaces her head scarf, and lies down on her
bed.

INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – EARLY

EVENING

GARY sits restrained in a high-tech torture chair with robotic

attachments and sensors. He has an Oculus mask on his face.
CLAUDIA BRANDINI removes the mask, which is wet with

78
tears. GARY looks bewildered. CLAUDIA exits the basement
room, walks up a spiral staircase, and enters an office where
MARSILIO BARBI stands.

CLAUDIA
Signor Barbi, the observation is finished. As anticipat-
ed, his response to the Forsaken sequence was deep.
But the pattern analysis shows . . . well, look for your-
self.
(she hands MARSILIO a tablet)

MARSILIO
I do not understand. This indicates a radical anti-
correlation. You have parametrized for all sequencings
of the first 39 primes, discounting 2 and 3?

CLAUDIA
Yes, of course, as well as cross-checked for patterning
between twins and non-twins.

MARSILIO
But . . .

CLAUDIA
Yes, the degree of invariance is unmatched even by Co-
tard delusion.58

MARSILIO
Impossible, but not unforeseen. His secret keeps its se-
cret by means of the secret itself, by cutting himself off
from itself. And the internet traffic statistics?

CLAUDIA
The non-random spike in Forsaken access is steady
since Sunday night.

79
 MARSILIO
Good. Your succubus is strong. There will now be an
increase, then a dip before it peaks. So we must watch
carefully, in order not to miss the resonance phase.

CLAUDIA
Sorry, I do not understand.

MARSILIO
Images are threads of the invisible. Some go all the way
to the Outside, like the radii of a spider web. Through a
person for whom the thread is vital, it can be struck, like
the string of a harp. This attracts others. But if the im-
age is caused to resonate, this calls the spider, the prin-
ciple which first created it. And we, my beautiful, are
the spider hunter!

CLAUDIA
How will we know if the “spider,” as you call it, is
called?
MARSILIO
It is not easy to say. Something will appear, a presence
that no one should see. And whatever that is, it will hold
a key for unlocking the secret.

CLAUDIA
I will monitor the traffic and ready the chamber.

MARSILIO
Good. Next we must overlay the Forsaken sequence
through a pain-matrix with the cross impressions in or-
der to accelerate the amygdala.

CLAUDIA
I understand. And sir, the candidates await you in the
conference room.

80
 MARSILIO
Of course.

MARSILIO walks out of his office into a meeting room with a

long table where about a dozen CANDIDATES are gathered,
dressed identically in corporate attire. In front of each of them,
on a small silver saucer, is a tiny black confection in the shape
of a pyramid.

MARSILIO
Ladies and gentlemen. It has been a pleasure to spend
this wondrous week with you. None of you would be
here if you did not have something very unique to offer
the world. As life becomes ever more penetrated by vir-
tual experience, it is essential, for the future of humani-
ty itself, to ensure the humanness of that experience.
This is our task: to personalize reality, to make it ours,
all the way down.59 No longer only spectators in this
universe, we are becoming its creators, the dreamers of
the world. To confirm and celebrate your commitment
to this great work, we have prepared a special festivity,
a dream masquerade! Before you is the pane-seme-
serpente, the serpent-seed bread, a lozenge of ancient
recipe which will hold your silver gate ajar for six hours
without sleep. Wake and dream wisely! None will re-
member nor forget tonight’s experiences, which will
never die, but burn forever like an invisible fire, bright-
ening the fringes of reality’s film. Now dissolve the ser-
pent into your tongue and follow me.

All place the lozenges on their tongues and MARSILIO leads

the CANDIDATES outside where they wander towards a
grove with some fires burning in the distance.

INT. FRANK MASTRO’S APARTMENT – EVENING

81
FRANK and ARIANA are sitting in the living room. Some
papers, books, and a bottle of wine are spread out before them.

ARIANA
Assuming Gary did uncover something dangerous about
1978, where might he have gone, and who might have
taken him?

FRANK
Who knows, there are conspiracy theories.

ARIANA
What do you think happened? You were there.

FRANK
I never really believed any of the explanations.

ARIANA
Why not?

FRANK
Blind intuition I guess. And there’s a dream I’ve had. I
see the Pope killed, crucified upside down like St. Peter,
and then decapitated.

ARIANA
Holy fuck. That is some dream. What if it actually hap-
pened?

FRANK
I had the dream the morning Gary came to my class.

ARIANA
What?

82
 FRANK
Yeah, feels like I’m walking into a guillotine of total co-
incidence, an empyrean conspiracy. If that makes sense.

ARIANA
Well it’s not like we have anything else to go on.

FRANK
I have something else to show you.

FRANK sets up the last scene of Forsaken to play on the tele-

vision.

ARIANA
Do we have to?

FRANK
Patience. This is serious. Watch my face as I view this
scene.

FRANK plays the movie. His face, neck, and left arm twitch
as before. But this time it is worse, causing him noticeable
pain.

ARIANA
Huh?

FRANK
Did you see that?

ARIANA
You mean it happened automatically?

FRANK
Yes, worse than last time.

83
 ARIANA
No way.

FRANK
Here, do it again, in slow motion this time, so you will
know for sure.
(handing ARIANA the remote)

ARIANA plays the video in slow-motion as FRANK’s body

twitches identically as before in precise time with the film,
only this time more slowly and painfully. There should be a
weird intimacy to the way this is shown, like ARIANA is see-
ing something revealed at once from inside the film and inside
Frank. Afterwards, FRANK experiences a moment of faint-
ness or half-swooning and has to sit down.

FRANK
Don’t worry. I’m OK.

ARIANA
Are you sure?

FRANK
Yes. I guess it is just affecting me more now.

ARIANA
To film fate with one’s face. So how do you explain
that?

FRANK
I don’t.

INT. RICHARD AND SAMANTHA OVERBY’S HOUSE,

BEDROOM – EVENING

RICHARD and SAMANTHA lie awake in bed after making

84
love. Their dialogue is interspersed with flashbacks of RICH-
ARD and CLAUDIA together, including having sex in
RICHARD’s car after dropping FRANK at his hotel on the
night of MAX SLEIMAN’s party.

SAMANTHA
Who was that woman with Frank at Max’s party?

RICHARD
Which woman?

SAMANTHA
The one hanging out with you guys, with the crucifix
necklace? You seemed to know each other.

RICHARD
Oh that was Emina. She works with the European re-
search group Oculus is partnering with.

SAMANTHA
Didn’t she look a hell of a lot like your old friend Talia,
the waitress? Only a lot younger than she would look
now of course.

RICHARD
I thought the same. There’s a striking resemblance. Café
O . . . What was the name of that place?

SAMANTHA
How can you forget? If Talia hadn’t introduced us . . .

RICHARD
It’ll come back.

SAMANTHA
You seem so distant after the party. Was it meeting

85
Frank?

RICHARD
It was great to meet Frank. He’s a very interesting man.
Emina really took to him, kept talking about him when I
showed her around the lab.

SAMANTHA
You didn’t tell me.

RICHARD
What’s to tell?

SAMANTHA
Obviously we are on different channels. I worry that . . .

RICHARD
What?

SAMANTHA
Nothing.

RICHARD
I give you everything.

SAMANTHA
Not yourself, not you.

RICHARD
I don’t know what to say to that.

SAMANTHA
See?

RICHARD
See what?

86
 SAMANTHA
Either life is a lie or I am insane.

RICHARD
Please, honey, where is this coming from? Try to relax
and get some sleep.

SAMANTHA
Origin, Café Origin, that’s the name of the place, where
it all never stops not beginning.

INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – EARLY

MORNING

GARY wakes, startled. TWO MEN and CLAUDIA enter

GARY’S holding room. As the TWO MEN restrain him,
CLAUDIA injects a drug into GARY’s left arm with a syringe.
CLAUDIA observes him closely as the drug begins to take
effect. As the world fades around him, we see as if through
GARY’s eyes while they remain looking at the gold cross
hanging from CLAUDIA’s neck. Eventually everything goes
dark, and we see only the cross, flashing dimly in the void.
CLAUDIA then opens each of GARY’s eyes, peering deep
into them with a small light.

CLAUDIA
OK, he is out. Bring him to the room in one hour.

INT. FRANK MASTRO’S APARTMENT ROOFTOP –

NIGHT

FRANK and ARIANA look out over the city.

ARIANA
I am afraid to go home. If someone took Gary,
maybe . . .

87
 FRANK
Yes, it may be wise to escape New York.

FRANK
You can sleep in my study tonight.

ARIANA
Perfect. I’ll feel right at home.

FRANK goes to set up the bed and ARIANA follows.

FRANK
It’s funny, when you are young, the dream is to overturn
everything. And then a new point arrives, imperceptibly
passed, when the dream has overturned you.

ARIANA
At least some dreams are more real than this one.

FRANK
That is true.

ARIANA
Sweet dreams!
(kissing FRANK on the cheek).

FRANK
Good night.

FRANK leaves the room. ARIANA looks around, finds the

stack of tear photographs and browses through them, finding a
police photograph of ASTRA’s accident in which the blood on
the street is circled where it forms a cross-like pattern. She
then moves over ASTRA’s photograph, drawn to it. A tear
rolls down her cheek.

88
 ARIANA
(whispering)
O darling, sweetheart, I love you. God protect you.

INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – EARLY

MORNING, BEFORE DAWN

MARSILIO stands outside as the TWO MEN help the CAN-

DIDATES into a small bus. Some appear dazed, others
wounded, one or two appear dead. All are unresponsive as
they are escorted onto the bus. The TWO MEN stand before
MARSILIO.

MARSILIO
Make sure each gets home safely. The ones who didn’t
make it, treat the bodies very gently. It is dangerous to
anger them in this phase. After 72 hours, dispose as be-
fore, bringing me the thigh bones for charring.

TWO MEN
Yes, sir.

The TWO MEN drive off in the van and MARSILIO returns
inside to a basement room where CLAUDIA awaits. Inside
GARY is naked and restrained on the torture chair with head
immobilized and palms upward. An Oculus-type mask covers
his eyes and ears. There are various sensors on his body and
cameras are set up in the room to record the session. CLAU-
DIA walks over to GARY.

CLAUDIA
Gary, you are with us now. The room is safe. We are not
going to harm you. You will feel pain, but we are not
going to damage you. Do you understand?

89
 GARY
OK, whatever. I hope you know what you are doing.

CLAUDIA
Think nothing. In three minutes the experience will be
over.

CLAUDIA steps back, shuts off the lights, and readies a com-
puter control pad which operates and is attached via wires to
the torture chair. Dim illumination is provided by computer
screens.

MARSILIO
Initiate.

CLAUDIA manipulates the control pad screen causing small

robotic arms next to GARY’s hands to move. The arms have
slim nail-like blades which are positioned to pierce his palms.
Another arm near his neck has a large needle which moves
into position on the right side base of his skull. The nails and
needle slow begin to enter GARY’s body. MARSILIO closes
his eyes as if trying to sense something. CLAUDIA carefully
manipulates the controls and observes the scans and readings.
MARSILIO appears to sense something and he motions to
CLAUDIA to turn off the lights and screens so that it is pitch
black in the room. Little by little faint colors in different tones
begin to appear around the room with no visible source. The
direction of the projection as it illuminates the faces and ob-
jects in the room shows that it is coming from the area of
GARY’s body. The colors slowly take on natural shapes con-
sistent with a dream GARY might be having based on his re-
cent experiences. As the forms become brighter and more de-
fined, we see childhood scenes seen from a POV perspective,
followed by representations of a more liquid, amniotic state.
The projection crystallizes and brightens into a top-down shot
of the scene of ASTRA’s death, zooming towards her crushed

90
head. When it reaches her head, there is a kind of boom and
flash of light which whites out the room and blinds MARSIL-
IO and CLAUDIA, who slump to the ground stunned. GARY
yells out and suddenly the computer screens which CLAUDIA
turned off turn on by themselves as if being hacked by an out-
side agent. Then the small robotic arm next to his right hand
begins to withdraw the nail. GARY looks down in wonder and
horror as the arm is then manipulated by an external force to
undo the binding on his right hand. His reactions indicate that
he is not using telekinesis or any kind of supernatural power.
As soon as his right hand is free he reaches back and carefully
withdraws the needle from his head. He then uses his right
hand to free his left hand from the nail. With his left hand he is
able to undo the brace holding his head in place. GARY frees
his legs and runs out of the lodge into the countryside at dawn.
Passing and startling some deer in an open field, he makes to a
roadway where he halts in the highbeams of an oncoming car.

INT. CONVENT IN BROOKLYN – MORNING

SISTER CONNELLY sits in her room, reading softly out loud

from the Gospel of Thomas.

SISTER CONNELLY
“When you make the two into one, and when you make
the inner like the outer, and the outer like the inner, and
the upper like the lower, and when you make male and
female into a single one . . .”

INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – MORN-

ING

MARSILIO and CLAUDIA return to consciousness after be-

ing stunned. MARSILIO is quiet and serious. CLAUDIA is
disoriented and trembling as if not knowing where she is.
MARSILIO tries to calm her down.

91
 MARSILIO
Claudia!

CLAUDIA
Don’t touch me! What the hell happened? What time is
it?

MARSILIO
We are OK. Calm down.

CLAUDIA
Where is Gary?

MARSILIO
He escaped.

CLAUDIA
How . . . ?

MARSILIO plays back the camera recordings.

MARSILIO
Check the data.

CLAUDIA reviews information on the computer.

CLAUDIA
The scan record is intact. We have full data from the tri-
al. But someone hacked the controls.

MARSILIO
I see that.

CLAUDIA
There is a signature on the command log.

92
 MARSILIO
Let me see.

MARSILIO walks over to the computer.

CLAUDIA
Super non contra. OSL.

MARSILIO
Above not against.

CLAUDIA
The spider?

MARSILIO
Yes. No. Don’t ask. Take everything offline and get me
Richard right away. He needs to fly out and collect
these results in person immediately.

CLAUDIA
What does this mean?

MARSILIO
That this data will no doubt provide the correct se-
quencing of the impressions from the 1978 dispensa-
tion. We have found it, but are not the only ones.

CLAUDIA
Who is?

MARSILIO
Precisely.

INT. DINER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE – MORNING

GARY, dressed in donated clothes and with band aids on each

93
of his hands, is eating a hearty breakfast at a busy diner coun-
ter. A gentle old man sitting next to him pats him on the back
in reassurance and GARY smiles in response, comforted.

SISTER CONNELLY (V.O.) (cont’d)

“. . . so that the male will not be male nor the female be
female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand
in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in
place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom.”

EXT. YOGA STUDIO IN MALIBU – MIDDAY

SAMANTHA and CAROL SLEIMAN are taking a yoga class

on a lovely terrace overlook the Pacific Ocean.

YOGA INSTRUCTOR
. . . be grateful for the opportunity to bless yourself with
this practice. Now, as you move into your day, connect
yourself with all that you feel. There is no separation.
Hear the ocean. You are the ocean. You are depth, pas-
sion, abundance. Smell the sweet air. You are the air.
You are gentleness, peace, generosity. Feel the sunlight.
You are the sun. You are wisdom, vision, truth. And
above all, you are love.

As the class concludes, SAMANTHA and CAROL walk out

together.
CAROL
Wasn’t that wonderful?

SAMANTHA doesn’t answer.

CAROL
Are you not feeling well?

94
 SAMANTHA
No, I’m OK. I’m just not myself these days.

CAROL
What is it?

SAMANTHA
Do you remember . . . ?

CAROL
What?

SAMANTHA
Nevermind.

EXT. FRANK AND ARIANA DRIVING IN UPSTATE NEW

YORK – MORNING

ARIANA
Where are we going?

FRANK
An old friend of mine, Sol, has, or had, a place in the
Adirondacks, off the grid. I have the keys.

ARIANA
Sol, isn’t that . . .

FRANK
Yes, the cameraman.

ARIANA
Whatever happened to him?

FRANK
He disappeared several years ago. Left his family a

95
 cryptic letter that he was leaving for good. The family
asked me to check up on the place.

ARIANA
Find anything?

FRANK
No, only a few signs that he had been there. They as-
sume he died somewhere in the mountains, that the
blindness caught up with him.

ARIANA
Suicide? So strange. I just had the weirdest déjà vu, like
being in a film I’ve already seen but can’t remember.

FRANK
It’s a universal feeling.

ARIANA
Abandon all hope, ye who exit.

FRANK
A non sequitur?

ARIANA
No. I was thinking that everything must have an exit.

FRANK
I don’t see one.

ARIANA
Nor I.

ARIANA’s phone rings and she answers.

96
 ARIANA
Hello?

GARY (V.O.)
Ariana!

ARIANA
Gary! Where are you? Are you OK?

GARY (V.O.)
Yes, don’t worry. Somebody took me, but I escaped.

ARIANA
O my God.
(to FRANK)
It’s Gary, he’s alright!

GARY (V.O.)
I am taking a bus to the city.

ARIANA
No, it’s not safe. We are driving upstate.

FRANK motions to have the phone.

FRANK
Gary, this is Frank.

GARY (V.O.)
Frank?

FRANK
We talked to Sister Connelly yesterday. Take a bus to
Albany. Can you do that?

97
 GARY (V.O.)
OK. Albany.

FRANK
We will pick you up at the corner of Lodge St. and
Maiden Lane. To be safe. There’s an old white building
there. Got it?

GARY
Yes, Lodge St and Maiden Lane. Old white building.

ARIANA takes the phone back.

ARIANA
Gary.

GARY (V.O.)
I will be there! You are not going to believe what hap-
pened.

ARIANA
I don’t. I love you!

GARY (V.O.)
I love you.

GARY hangs up the phone.

ARIANA
I am so happy.

FRANK
A tunnel at the beginning of the light!

INT. A PASSENGER BUS – AFTERNOON

98
A shot of the passengers in transit on the bus, with GARY
among them. The shot should accentuate the heads of the peo-
ple, which are hooked up to various devices and/or watching
drop down movie screens. Though tuned into different experi-
ences, the majority of the heads rock and bob in unconscious
unison to the movement of the bus, communicating a dark
sense of their submersion in the world, like Plato’s Allegory of
the Cave.

INT. PRIVATE JET – DAY

RICHARD OVERBY picks up the phone.

RICHARD
Max.

MAX (V.O.)
Yes.

RICHARD
Does the name Gary Thatcher mean anything?

MAX (V.O.)
No, I can’t say it does.

RICHARD
He’s the graduate student Frank was joking about at the
party. Seems he’s something more than your average
fan boy. The Italians inform me that he has some sensi-
tive information.

MAX (V.O.)
That is unfortunate.

RICHARD
Maybe not. But we need to speak with him as soon as

99
 possible. I’m flying out East now.

MAX (V.O.)
I understand. Will let you know if I hear anything.

RICHARD
Very good.

EXT. MASONIC TEMPLE, ALBANY – EARLY EVENING

FRANK and ARIANA wait in front of the entrance for GARY,

before the twin columns capped by stone spheres, similar to
the columns in front of the White Castle in SISTER CON-
NELLY’s vision.60

ARIANA
Have you been here before?

FRANK
When I was little boy. My grandfather Mario, we called
him Mo, worked up here as a stonemason and liked to
show me the buildings.

A BOY, lagging behind his family, walks before FRANK and

ARIANA, carelessly bouncing a blue ball.

ARIANA
Play marbles with memory.

ARIANA sees GARY approaching and they run to greet each

other, embracing.

FRANK
What to say? Let’s get going.

100
 ARIANA
Everything!

They enter the car nearby.

ARIANA
What happened to your hands?

GARY
Nothing too serious. A sweet old man in North Conway
bandaged them.

FRANK
We will be safe at Sol’s.

ARIANA
You must tell Gary about the dream, and the nerve
thing, and what Sister Connelly said.

GARY
I never meant for anyone to see the video. Didn’t know
what I was doing. Forgive me.

ARIANA
No one except everyone on the internet! Forgiven.

GARY
Yes, there may be a small contradiction there.

FRANK
Everything is contradiction. Gary, I am sorry to have
brushed you off last week. Tell us all.

GARY
I was sitting at home Friday night when two men came
to the door . . .

101
INT. RICHARD and SAMANTHA OVERBY’S HOUSE –
MIDDAY

SAMANTHA is looking through an album of photographs

from her and RICHARD’s wedding. She is trying to find a
photograph of TALIA/CLAUDIA. She finds only a group pic-
ture where CLAUDIA’S face is eclipsed by someone else’s
head. Around the head is a subtle shadow, suggestive of a dark
nimbus or halo. ROBERT screeches his car into the driveway
and enters the living room.

SAMANTHA
Robert?

ROBERT
Is Richard here?

SAMANTHA
He had to fly back east. Didn’t he tell you?

ROBERT
Fuck!

SAMANTHA
What’s the matter?

ROBERT
Nothing. I just need . . .

ROBERT goes into RICHARD’s study. He searches the desk

and bookshelves and eventually finds a small box which he
forces open with a letter opener inside of which are two old
keys. He takes the keys as SAMANTHA enters the room.

SAMANTHA
What are you looking for?

102
 ROBERT
Nothing. I thought . . .

ROBERT, who previously appeared quite agitated, now walks

out of the room very slowly in a non-responsive, automatic
way.

SAMANTHA
Where are you going?

ROBERT walks out to the car. SAMANTHA follows.

SAMANTHA
Robert, what are you doing?

ROBERT
I am . . .

ROBERT gets in his car and drives off. SAMANTHA gets in

her car and follows.

EXT/INT. WOODS IN UPSTATE NEW YORK – SUNSET

FRANK et al. drive through a dark wood-lined road then turn

uphill onto Sol Francken’s eroded driveway. They pull up to
his house, which is run-down in a classic Appalachian way
(debris in the yard, overgrown bushes, unkempt exterior). All
exit the car, walk up to the porch, and FRANK opens the door.

FRANK
There is no power here, just an old generator out back
that might prefer not to work.

ARIANA and GARY check out the place as FRANK goes out
back. The cabin is clean but old and dusty from lack of use.
The evening sun streams in the windows, illuminating the

103
golden motes of dust.

GARY
That thou seest, man, become too thou must; / God, if
thou seest God, dust, if thou seest dust.

ARIANA
I see you!

ARIANA joyfully embraces GARY so that they fall back to-

gether onto a single bed, causing more dust to be stirred into
the air.

EXT. OLD CEMETARY IN LOS ANGELES – EVENING

SAMANTHA’s car follows ROBERT’s into a cemetery.

ROBERT parks and walks to the pyramidal mausoleum where
he was previously with CLAUDIA and RICHARD. SAMAN-
THA observes from a distance. ROBERT opens the door with
one of the keys and enters. SAMANTHA sits in the car for a
while, pondering what to do, then gets out and starts walking
slowly toward the mausoleum.

INT. SOL’S CABIN IN UPSTATE NEW YORK – LATE AT

NIGHT

FRANK, ARIANA, and GARY are sitting drinking bourbon

around a coffee table lit by one small lamp.

GARY
Clearly we are beyond the threshold of coincidence
here. The copy of the Spiritual Exercises I saw in Rome
was torn like in Frank’s dream.

FRANK
The Green Man must have it.

104
 ARIANA
For real? This is too much. Like a movie about a con-
spiracy about a movie. A cosmic secret leaked by occult
forces out of the Pope’s corpse into the imaginal fabric
of Forsaken, affecting whomsoever it touches, the
Templar key to headless seeing, coveted by the Illumi-
nati to maintain cinematic control of the world?61 Seri-
ously? I think we all need to get some sleep.

GARY
It is late.

FRANK
I will turn off the generator to save fuel. Here are some
candles.

FRANK exits and GARY and ARIANA light the candles. The
lamp goes out as the power is cut.

ARIANA
(closing her eyes)
You can try to explain the video tomorrow.

GARY
Zero, four, three, three.

ARIANA
Tomorrow!

ARIANA gets up and walks down a dark hallway and then up

some steep steps towards the bathroom carrying a candle.

ARIANA
Man it’s dark here.

ARIANA enters the bathroom and places her candle and

105
matches on the sink. While looking in the mirror the candle
tips over and goes out. She fumbles around in the dark.

ARIANA
Hey can somebody bring me a light!

Receiving no answer she begins fumbling around for the can-

dle which has rolled away. She then starts feeling her way
back along the walls towards the top of the stairwell.

ARIANA
So this is what it was like, to be Sol.

As ARIANA says this the lightbulb in a wall lamp at the top of

stairwell faintly glows, providing just enough illumination for
ARIANA to catch herself before stepping off the landing.

ARIANA
Weird.

GARY arrives carrying his candle at the bottom of the steps.

The lamp dims out.

GARY
Everything OK?

ARIANA
Yes, my light went out. I called for you.

GARY
I was outside helping Frank with the generator.

ARIANA
O that must have been it.

GARY comes up the stairs and all retire for the night.

106
EXT. OLD CEMETARY IN LOS ANGELES – EVENING

ROBERT walks down the dark spiral stairs of the mausoleum

to the lower chamber. He opens the door with one of the keys.
As he enters it a motion sensor triggers a red LED light which
illuminates the room. In the back of the room are air shafts
with grates on them. There is a faint sound of running water.
In the back center of the room, between the air shafts, is an
ornate casket-like box, black and gold, set at a sloping angle
with the head higher than the feet. A pipe leads from the upper
part of the wall into the top of the casket at one side. On the
other side, there is a large covered basin with a pipe leading
into the casket. The front of the casket has a double door-like
lid and an ornate grated opening. At the foot of the casket an-
other pipe descends into the floor. At the side of the room is a
shelf with several towels, bottles of water, a variety of sub-
stances in glass and crystal bottles, and some instruments of
torture and pleasure. At the head of the casket is a strange ge-
ometric kind of keyhole. ROBERT examines the keyhole,
which is obviously too large for either of the keys he took
from RICHARD’s study. He tries to open the casket with his
hands to no avail. He grabs one of the implements and inserts
it into the hole, trying to force the lock. He partially succeeds,
loosening the other, which he is then able to pry open.

INT. SOL’S CABIN IN UPSTATE NEW YORK – MID-

NIGHT

ARIANA opens her eyes in bed, woken by a strange buzz-

ing/humming sound. She gets up and looks around, unable to
tell exactly where it is coming from, but it is louder in the liv-
ing room, where she notices that the outdated television is
faintly glowing. She flips a light switch and tries to turn on a
lamp, but nothing happens, showing that the electricity is not
on. She goes to the television and sits before the screen listen-
ing to the sound. She touches the screen with her right finger

107
and as she does so light gathers and glows around it in a spe-
cific color. Simultaneously, the sound she is hearing in the
room changes tone. As she focuses on the tone, another area of
subtle light, different in color, appears on the screen and she
brings her left hand to touch its center. Another tone is added
to the sounds she hears pervading the room. The areas of light
begin slowly to move, and she follows them with her fingers.
The movements increase in speed and assume the form of a
complex pattern matched with sounds. She continues to move
her hands in synchronicity with the lights on the screen, para-
doxically as if remembering the pattern more and more the
more complicated and fast it becomes, like a weird combina-
tion of a Ouija board and the electronic Simon Says memory
game. The pattern of lights has an overall cross-like and four-
square structure and the sounds repeat in a 0-4-3-3 pattern.
ARIANA starts sounding out the tones with her own voice,
entering a trance more and more intense, so that she appears to
be both musician and instrument of the pattern, both played by
and playing the forms being communicated through the
screen. The volume becomes loud enough to wake FRANK
who comes into the room. What he sees shocks and terrifies
him: ARIANA’s body kneeling down in front of the radiant
screen, her torso detached from her limbs floating in the air,
her arms still moving in unison with the pattern of light and
color, and her severed head floating in the center of the room,
vibrating with sound.

FRANK
Ariana!

As FRANK screams her name he drops to the floor uncon-

scious and the screen goes white.

EXT. OLD CEMETARY IN LOS ANGELES – EVENING

ROBERT slowly pries open the two doors of the casket to re-

108
veal the SIBYL, an emaciated middle-aged woman whose
four limbs have been amputated. Her stumps are fitted with
gold coverings which are attached to the interior of the casket.
The SIBYL is naked except for a kind of harness, connected to
the waste tubes, which covers her genitals like a chastity belt.
She appears tranquil and breathing softly, as if sleeping, eyes
closed. The interior of the casket is fitted with a patterned
concentric array of different colored gemstones in a general
cross pattern. The SIBYL has golden hair, except for a spot on
the top of her head which is bald and fitted with an ornament
framing an opening into the crown. This is evidently where
the crystal key previously carried by CLAUDIA is to be in-
serted. Entranced in a kind of reverie, ROBERT begins to
slowly probe the crown opening of the SIBYL with his right
hand while touching other parts of her body with his left. The
SIBYL stirs gently, slowly opening her eyes which are a strik-
ing sea-green color. Robert stares fixedly into her eyes. The
SIBYL begins to open her mouth and make subtle sounds as if
beginning to whisper something. ROBERT leans closer. Sud-
denly the SIBYL, as if startled and realizing her violation in a
shock, becomes agitated and begins to shiver and writhe.
ROBERT, still entranced, places his ear to her mouth. With a
screech the SIBYL bites down hard on ROBERT’s ear.
Stunned and bleeding, ROBERT screams and fumbles for a
towel to cover his wound. Then SAMANTHA enters the
room.

SAMANTHA
My God Robert what the hell? You’re hurt!

ROBERT
Fuck!! You should not be here.

SAMANTHA
Robert what’s matter? What is this place?

109
SAMANTHA now sees the SIBYL and begins screaming is
shock and horror. ROBERT gags her with the towel he was
using to stanch his ear wound.

ROBERT
You cannot be here!

He takes a cord from the shelf and binds SAMANTHA’s

wrists to something near the base of the casket. He tapes the
gag in place over her mouth and stares as SAMANTHA
crumples to the floor in confused terror.

ROBERT
OK, we will deal with this.

ROBERT takes out his cell phone and makes a call.

ROBERT
Richard, this is Robert. I have a serious problem here.

EXT. SOL’S CABIN IN UPSTATE NEW YORK – LATE

MORNING

ARIANA and GARY are sitting having coffee on the porch.

GARY
Do you think I should tell Frank about my dream, of be-
ing Astra?

ARIANA
I don’t think so. Not now. Too much as is.

GARY
Right.

110
 ARIANA
And I had the strangest dream last night. I was com-
municating to Sol through the television in a secret lan-
guage of light and sound.

GARY
How’d you know it was Sol?

ARIANA
I don’t know. It just was. Like how a voice just is
someone. And even though I was dreaming it, it was al-
so like the dream was dreaming me, playing me, but
dreaming me actually being there for real.

GARY
A lucid dream?

ARIANA
Maybe, I don’t know.

FRANK walks out from the house.

FRANK
It wasn’t a dream.

GARY
Morning Frank. Find Sol’s secret stash last night? We
found you passed out in the living room and moved you
to the couch.

FRANK
It wasn’t a dream Ariana. This might be one. But what I
saw last night was real.

ARIANA
What are you talking about?

111
 FRANK
You, in front of the television. Your head was . . . sepa-
rated from your body.

ARIANA
What??

GARY
You are saying that you saw Ariana’s dream?

FRANK
No I am saying she wasn’t dreaming.

ARIANA
So what was I doing?

FRANK
You were moving your hands on the screen in a pattern
of lights and sounds, and . . . floating in the room, in
parts.

ARIANA
Floating? Sol was telling me something so familiar, but
I can’t remember it now.

GARY
And her body appeared severed, limb from limb?

FRANK
Yes!

ARIANA
Like the saints Sister C mentioned. What are those
numbers you said last night?

112
 GARY
Zero, Four, Three, Three.

ARIANA
That’s the pattern Sol was using. So I was sleepwalk-
ing?

FRANK
The video?

GARY
Yes, the numbers are just a placeholder, for something
you can’t get your head around. One must do it, like
you did in Forsaken.

FRANK
I didn’t fucking do that!

ARIANA
Exactly. Like me. Without knowing it. So, love, how
did you . . . not figure it out?

GARY
Chinnamasta, that’s a three-plus-one form: three bodies
in four parts with three streams of blood. That is a sym-
bol for headless seeing as a fourth dimension. I look at
the cross and write three threes on the lower points and
one on the top. Three threes plus one one. The sum is
ten, one plus zero, one. A total form. Then Sister Con-
nelly reminds me about the five wounds, how the head
wounds do not count, so those wounds are “behead-
ed.”62 Now the Indian goddess always holds her head in
her left hand, like the witch in Forsaken. So on the
cross diagram, you decapitate the one, making it a zero
and adding one to the left 3. Zero, four, three, three. I
saw myself as that and . . .

113
 FRANK
And what?

GARY
I don’t know!

ARIANA
A self-beheading medieval witch in a 70s horror flick
showed you how to see beyond perspective and project
imagination into matter.

GARY
Real special effects. Cinematic vision. Seeing from out-
side your head. This world is a screen.

ARIANA
Cut and paste.

FRANK
OK, no more coincidences. This is so scary and beauti-
ful and real I can barely think. Clearly we’ve been
touched, or spliced, by something . . .

ARIANA
Sacred.

FRANK
Right. Or we are totally fucked, screwed in the head.

GARY
Forsaken is a miracle.

ARIANA
Yeah, but of what?

114
 FRANK
If Sol could tell us what he saw, what blinded him . . .

ARIANA
That’s it! He must still be here.

GARY
Or what’s left of him.

INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – LATE

MORNING

RICHARD arrives and walks towards the bar of the lodge

where CLAUDIA BRANDINI is seated alone, smoking.

CLAUDIA
Sorted out?

RICHARD
Yes. Marsilio will take Samantha to the clinic for safe-
keeping.

CLAUDIA
Life is full of surprises. Will Gary Thatcher work for
Oculus?

RICHARD
It may not be very difficult to persuade him. Tell me
about the new data.

CLAUDIA
The patterns from Gary’s trial match perfectly, to the
thirty-ninth prime, the impressions retrieved in ‘78.

RICHARD
Retrieved?

115
 CLAUDIA
Ah, now you can hear the story.

BEGIN FLASHBACK: INT. PAPAL APARTMENTS,

HALLWAY – EARLY MORNING, 1978

A CARDINAL leads MARSILIO BARBI and TWO MEN

down the hallway. BARBI’s appearance is the same as in ear-
lier scenes, only barely younger, as if he ages at a supernatu-
rally slow rate.

CARDINAL
Do not worry, Signor Barbi, I am certain that His Holi-
ness will be delighted to see you this morning. He rises
early.

MARSILIO
I would not want to disturb him.

As they walk down the hall, the TWO MEN, without being
noticed, ready pistols. All arrive before the door to the POPE’s
chambers, which the CARDINAL opens.

CARDINAL
Please.

The CARDINAL walks away. MARSILIO and the TWO

MEN enter and discover the body of the POPE, killed as in the
opening scene. The POPE’S head is stuck on a spear which is
upright and placed in the body’s left hand, as if he is holding
it. The face of the POPE’s head appears to be softly smiling.
BARBI and the TWO MEN are taken aback with horror and
shock.

MARSILIO
Giuda ballerino!63 But how in God’s name? Who could

116
 get here before us? On the very day. Who???!!!

MARSILIO looks around, examines the body. He finds the

wound in the POPE’s side and places his finger inside.

MARSILIO
I do not believe this. It is impossible.

MARSILIO feels the parchment within the body and begins to

slowly pull it out, showing part of the Prime Number Cross
design. As he does so, one of the TWO MEN reaches out to
touch the POPE’s severed head, which has lines of black
caked ashes descending from the eyes and nose and mouth.

MAN
Cristo santo.

MARSILIO
Non toccare!!!

The MAN pulls back.

MAN
We must call the alarm immediately, or they will sus-
pect us.

MARSILIO
Quick. Scrape the black dust from the head into that en-
velope there.

The TWO MEN gather the ashes as MARSILIO folds the

parchment and places it in his green suit. Once finished, they
all begin shouting for help.

END FLASHBACK.

117
 RICHARD
Fuck.

CLAUDIA
(after a long pause)
That’s what I was thinking.

INT. SOL’S HOUSE – LATE MORNING

ARIANA and GARY are searching around the back of SOL’s

cabin, walking towards the generator shed.

GARY
. . . seven rings of twenty-four integers, one through
one-sixty-eight, like a huge clock or medieval cosmos.

ARIANA
Now we have to get tattoos.

GARY
Prime number cross?

ARIANA
With the twins colored in black.

GARY
Why black?

ARIANA
Because the twin primes are the sacred pupils of head-
less seeing. Joined by separation, separated by joining.

GARY
And they sum to ten or one plus zero for one vision.

They enter the shed, which is dark and dusty.

118
 ARIANA
And if vision were to see itself?

GARY
“Thou canst not see my face; for Man shall not see me,
and live.”

ARIANA
Look! There is a small door here. Like to a root cellar.

GARY
That makes sense. They didn’t have generators when
this place was built.

ARIANA
Of course! All roads lead to Rome. Gimme the flash-
light and go get Frank.

GARY
Be careful.

ARIANA
(winking)
Not to worry, I’m a woman.

GARY goes out to get FRANK, who is sitting down gazing at

an unopened handwritten letter.

GARY
Frank!

FRANK looks up and stares at GARY in silence with an in-

tensely moved look, as if recognizing GARY in a new way.

GARY
Frank come with me. We found something.

119
FRANK folds the letter into his pocket and follows GARY in
silence. As they return towards the shed ARIANA screams.
They rush in to find ARIANA in the cellar shining the flash-
light on the remains of SOL’s body, who appears to have died
from spontaneous combustion. Parts of his extremities remain,
arms and legs, but the rest is black and silver ashes, which
swirl in the air.

FRANK
O my God.

They stare in silent wonder at the eerie scene.

ARIANA
Probably best if no one finds him.

GARY
Precisely.

INT. MOUNTAIN LODGE, NEW HAMPSHIRE – MIDDAY

CLAUDIA and RICHARD go to the basement room where
GARY was tortured. CLAUDIA leans over the chair and
RICHARD binds her wrists to it, then undresses himself and
her.

CLAUDIA
The mask.

RICHARD places the Oculus mask over her eyes and presses
a button to initiate a sequencing of impressions. Her gold cru-
cifix dangles in the air.

CLAUDIA
Whip me.

RICHARD flogs CLAUDIA to excitement.

120
 CLAUDIA
Fuck me.

RICHARD places a black hood over his head and penetrates

CLAUDIA from behind as she stares directly into the projec-
tor.

CLAUDIA
No, here.

CLAUDIA reaches back to redirect RICHARD’s penis, so that

its place of entry remains ambivalent. RICHARD penetrates
her with increasing intensity. CLAUDIA begins to have a very
strong orgasm, her abdominal muscles contracting through
long and deep but not very vocal breaths. Her brow furrows
intensely to suggest a connection to the third eye.

CLAUDIA
O God, O God! It is there, right there in front of me.

RICHARD
Tell me. Tell me what you see.

CLAUDIA climaxes as the energy of her body dies down with

aftershocks of the orgasm. RICHARD ejaculates holding her
neck and bringing his mouth to her ear.

RICHARD
Tell me!

CLAUDIA
Nothing. I see nothing.

INT. ROOT CELLAR OUTSIDE SOL’S HOUSE – MIDDAY

Slowly and silently, ARIANA, GARY, and FRANK collect the

121
remains of SOL’s body, inevitably inhaling and getting cov-
ered in the ashes, which they carry away in a small container
after burying the limbs in the ground.

INT. MAUSOLEUM – MIDDAY

We see darkness and then a light as someone opens the door to

the mausoleum chamber where SAMANTHA is bound and
gagged. TWO MEN enter the room, place a black hood over
her head, inject her with a sedative, and carry her away. As the
door closes behind them, the camera remains for a while in the
room, slowly zooming towards the SIBYL’s casket.

EXT. FREEWAY IN NEW YORK CITY – EARLY EVEN-

ING

FRANK, GARY, and ARIANA are driving back to the city.

ARIANA
What will you do with Sol’s ashes?

FRANK
I don’t know.

They look out over Calvary Cemetery in Queens from the

BQE, with the skyline of Manhattan in the background.

FRANK
I think it’s time for me to leave this city.

GARY
Where?

FRANK
I don’t know.

122
The car pulls up to a block in Brooklyn

FRANK
Will you two be OK?

GARY
Sure.

ARIANA
I’m not worried anymore.

FRANK
Good, here we are.

The car pulls up outside Gary and Ariana’s apartment. GARY

and ARIANA say goodbye, start to walk away, and then
pause.

GARY
Hey Frank, what were you reading, before we found
Sol?

FRANK
A letter from an old friend.

ARIANA
Who?

FRANK
Rebecca, Rebecca Toma.

GARY
What did it say?

FRANK
I haven’t read it.

123
 ARIANA
(winking)
Secret.

EXT/INT. OCULUS MEDIA LABORATORIES, CALIFOR-

NIA – MORNING

MARSILIO and RICHARD walk in the grounds outside the

Oculus laboratories. The O.M. logo is visible in the back-
ground.

RICHARD
Is there any reason for O.M. to be concerned any further
with this Forsaken business?

MARSILIO
I don’t believe so. Mastro’s movements will be moni-
tored.

RICHARD
Good. And Thatcher?

MARSILIO
Give him time. He will come around. Meanwhile, we
have what we need.

CLAUDIA exits the building and joins them.

CLAUDIA
Gentlemen, the computations are finished. Please come
inside. The results will please you.

All walk inside the laboratory and enter a room with a large
screen. CLAUDIA brings up a series of diagrams and numbers
on the screen, including one resembling the Prime Number
Cross.

124
 CLAUDIA
As you can see, by delivering all permutations simulta-
neously at maximum intensity via the filter modelled on
the Thatcher data, we have achieved fully differentiated
personalization with 97% awareness in both subjects.

MARSILIO
Fantastic.

RICHARD
Just as we thought. Now, by sequencing the intersection
of the twins’ divergent impressional expenditures, we
can move forward immediately with synthesizing a ma-
trix whose effects will be temporary to within 3% un-
predictability.

MARSILIO
The global partners will be happy with anything under
4%.

RICHARD
And Gemma and Emma, how are they holding up?

CLAUDIA
As anticipated, the frequency of sharp waves in the hip-
pocampus is extreme. The experiment has left them in-
capable of forgetting.

RICHARD walks over to adjacent one-way observation win-

dows, followed by CLAUDIA and MARSILIO. The windows
look into separate rooms containing GEMMA and EMMA.
The rooms are furnished normally, like dorm rooms, contain-
ing a few personal effects. Where GEMMA appears abnormal-
ly excited, as if in a mad state of constant reaction to a pletho-
ra of hallucinations or subjective mental movies, EMMA sits
calmly at her computer, writing emails, browsing the web, and

125
listening to music.

CLAUDIA
Yet, as you can see, the behaviors could not be more
different. Where GEMMA is effectively insane, EMMA
is as normal as ever. Yet neurologically, they have never
been more identical.

MARSILIO
Amazing. How beautiful they are like this to me. So
perfectly, differently the same.

RICHARD
Themselves forever.

INT. MEDICAL CLINIC, CALIFORNIA – LATE MORN-

ING

SAMANTHA wakes up in an elegant room overlooking the

beach, golden light on her face. A NURSE enters the room.

NURSE
Good morning Samantha.

SAMANTHA
Where am I?

NURSE
Do not worry. There was an accident. You are safe now.

SAMANTHA
Accident?

NURSE
The Doctor will explain everything. Try to rest.

126
 SAMANTHA
Rest?

The NURSE exits the room. SAMANTHA stares at the sun as

it sets behind the horizon of the ocean. She is confused. She
looks down towards her body and kicks and throws off the
covers to discover that her limbs have been amputated, at the
knees and elbows. She stares at herself in shock and starts to
weep. The room darkens as the sunlight fades away.

INT. TATTOO PARLOR, BROOKLYN – EVENING

GARY and ARIANA sit and smile at each other in adjacent

chairs getting tattoos of the Prime Number Cross on their
arms. The camera hovers above them to highlight the disem-
bodiment of perspective.

INT. FRANK’S APARTMENT – NIGHT

FRANK sits in his study. To his right is the letter from RE-
BECCA found at SOL’s house, still unopened. The camera
hovers around FRANK’s head the way it did earlier. He be-
gins reading the letter, whose words we cannot make out, ex-
cept for the signature, “Rebecca Toma,” including a small
stamp based on the form of the Narcissus flower. He puts the
letter down and holds his head in his hands as the camera
looks down from above on him, sobbing. A tear falls on the
Narcissus emblem, causing the ink to start to bleed. FRANK
watches as the ink bleeds out in branch like forms. After it
stops, he takes a photograph of it, which he blows up on the
screen. Astonished, he sees that the ink has formed into the
ROMA-AMOR square surrounding a face. FRANK pulls out
a still from Forsaken showing Cinnaedea’s severed head at the
moment it turns young again and we see that the face closely
resembles it. FRANK’s face and neck twitch as they did be-
fore. He feels faint and swoons to the ground.

127
INT. MAX SLEIMMAN’S HOUSE – NIGHTIME

MAX and CAROL sit watching a late night television talk

show in which ROBERT is being interviewed.

HOST
Kingdom of Night, wow. You must be pretty happy with
how the movie performed this week.

ROBERT
Yes, the whole thing is a dream come true. Max Slei-
man is an awesome director and human being. It has
been an honor to work with him and his team.

CAROL places her hand on MAX’s arm in a gesture of appre-

ciation.

HOST
Your family must be very proud.

ROBERT
I owe my success to them, especially my step-father
Richard and most of all my mother, who was so sup-
portive from day one.
(waving to the camera)
Hi Mom!

HOST
So sweet. Now, tell us about your work with Oculus
Media, the whole “neurocinema” thing that’s got every-
one speculating.

ROBERT
It’s very exciting.

128
 HOST
What is “neurocinema” exactly?

ROBERT
Well, all cinema is neurocinema of course, meaning that
we see it with our brains. What Oculus is doing is tak-
ing the process to the next level, developing a way to
harness the power of our imagination so that the film-
viewing experience is much more individualized and in-
teractive.

HOST
Like a video game?

ROBERT
To some degree, yes. But we’re talking about a new
level of intensity, not only audio-visual effects, but also
affective and emotional qualities on par with what you
might only experience in dreams, or real life. They call
it AS for Acute Subjectivity.

HOST
As in as real as reality?

ROBERT
Exactly.

HOST
So how does it work, exactly?

ROBERT
The science is way over my head. But basically, O.M.
has found a 100% natural, non-invasive, non-chemical
way of activating the part of the brain responsible for
lucid dreaming, in sync with algorithms embedded
within the movie stream.

129
The HOST looks impressed, then hams it up by making a joke
of looking at his hands to check if he is dreaming or not.

HOST
How many fingers do you see? Pinch me!

The audience laughs. ROBERT pinches him playfully.

ROBERT
But seriously, this is the real deal. And it’s so authentic,
a leap beyond those alienating VR systems.

HOST
You’ll never catch me wearing one of those masks, bro.
Maybe if I was ugly!

ROBERT looks uneasy for a moment and brings his hand to

his ear where the SIBYL bit him.

HOST
Great to have you on the show, Robert. You look great!
Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Mastro!

EXT. LEONARDO DA VINCI INTERNATIONAL AIR-

PORT, ROME – LATE MORNING

FRANK arrives and gets in a taxi, which takes him through

sunny Rome, dropping him off at an elegant apartment build-
ing. An ASSISTANT is there to greet him as he gets out of the
taxi. FRANK carries with him, in a small container, SOL’s
ashes.

ASSISTANT
Signor Mastro. Welcome to Roma. Please come this
way.

130
INT. MEDICAL CLINIC, CALIFORNIA – MIDDLE OF
THE NIGHT

A full moon shines over the ocean and into the room where
SAMANTHA lies in bed. Suddenly she opens her eyes and
with steady determination wiggles painfully out of her re-
straints and onto the floor supported by her still bandaged
limbs. She crawls out the window, over a small garden wall
and into the vegetation leading towards the beach. As she
eventually makes it down to the surf, blood appears on her
bandages, which eventually become loose and fall off as she
enters the water. Barely able to stay afloat in the water, she
resembles a sinuous and wounded water creature, a form los-
ing its humanity in a desperate yet ecstatic dissolution in the
ocean. The scene should look and feel primordial, like SA-
MANTHA is passing in death through the evolutionary mys-
tery of birth.

INT. ELEGANT BUILDING, ROME – MIDDAY

The ASSISTANT leads FRANK through the building to a

large room where REBECCA TOMA stands surrounded by a
small group of people. There is various film equipment and
crates around the room. REBECCA is elegant, beautiful, and
about Frank’s age, with the charismatic aura of an older starlet
like Stefania Casini. The ASSISTANT silently points her out
to FRANK, as we hear some late 70s giallo/horror synth play-
ing in the background.64 REBECCA sees FRANK and they
move across the room to greet each other.

REBECCA
Frank!

FRANK and REBECCA embrace warmly.

131
 REBECCA
Everyone! I’d like you to meet Frank Mastro. Frank
will be directing the shoot next week. Please see to his
every need. This is an especially important one.

REBECCA and FRANK walk together to sit in a smaller room

with comfortable chairs, behind which is another room whose
door is slightly ajar. They sit, happy and moved to see each
other again.

FRANK
This schedule, this shoot – I was studying it the whole
flight over and it seems, frankly, impossible.

REBECCA
Don’t worry. It will all work out. We need this one fin-
ished by the twenty ninth. It is the thirty-ninth anniver-
sary, and three plus three plus three plus three equals
three.

FRANK
OK. One question. May I ask who I am working for?

REBECCA
Yes, sweetheart, you may.

An assistant stands before FRANK to whom REBECCA ges-

tures to hand over the container holding SOL’s ashes, which
FRANK does. The assistant enters the room behind whose
door is ajar. REBECCA reaches over to close the door that is
ajar, showing us behind it a hint of one of the THREE FIG-
URES.

REBECCA
Only the best, Frank, only the best.

132
INT. GARY AND ARIANA’S APARTMENT – MORNING

GARY and ARIANA are hanging out. GARY sits in front of

his television screen. An elegant ebony, paper-sized box with
the O.M. logo rests on the coffee table in front of him.

GARY
O my God, Ariana! You must see this. You are not go-
ing to believe it. You cannot not see this.

ARIANA rushes over to see what GARY is seeing. Both stare

at the screen in astonishment and wonder.

INT. CONVENT IN BROOKLYN – DAYTIME

A group of NUNS, in blue habits, are gathered in a common

room listening to the news on the radio. Among them, off to
the side, is SISTER CONNELLY.

NEWSPERSON
First in the news today, reports are increasing around
the world of a strange and increasingly evident new
kind of black anomaly or glitch affecting not only most
forms of visual media but human vision itself. Dubbed
“blind matter,” “chaos ash,” and more commonly,
“black dust,” the phenomenon has no scientifically
known boundary or origin and is causing confusion,
fascination, and concern worldwide. As myriad theories
are advanced by individuals and institutions as to its
cause, from some form of mass hallucination to a deep
cosmological weather event, governments are urging
people to remain calm as there is no evidence that the
“black dust” has any effects other than its own appear-
ance. Meanwhile, new evidence of “black dust” is pil-
ing up, leaving its mark on everything from children’s
cartoons to terrorist execution videos. Even more dis-

133
 concerting is the fact that the unknown phenomenon is
both objective and subjective in a spontaneous and in-
explicable way, sometimes appearing to many persons
at once and sometimes only to one. Some persons even
report seeing strange swirls of the stuff in their dreams.
Others claim being able to touch it physically. Later in
the program, we will be discussing the “black dust”
phenomenon at length with a panel of experts from dif-
ferent fields . . .

As the radio program continues on to other topics in the back-

ground, the attention of the NUNS is diverted to a formless
blackness moving spontaneously through the room. At times it
appears connected or attached to physical objects. At other
times it appears disconnected from them. Like a cloud moving
across the fabric of reality itself, the blackness gives form to a
deeper dimensionality that paradoxically makes our material
reality seem more flat. In other words, the geometry of the
black dust represents a connection between the fourth dimen-
sion of the world on film and the screen on which the movie is
being projected. As the black dust creeps through the NUNS’
common area with some seeing it and others not, it passes
through/across a crucifix hanging on the wall, causing the
painted wounds on the statue of Christ to glisten ambivalently.
Some of the NUNS get on their knees and start praying. Oth-
ers leave the room. SISTER CONNELLY remains calm, a
subtle smile and joy appearing on her face.

EXT/INT. A CASTLE IN A DESERT LANDSCAPE – SUN-

RISE

FRANK and REBECCA stand in front of the White Castle,

surrounded by a small film CREW. The White Castle is con-
siderably aged and damaged by time and warfare, with some
illegible graffiti. REBECCA is directing the scene.

134
 REBECCA
Frank, I can’t believe it! We are really here! The final
scene. Our work is nearly finished!
(she kisses him with joy)

REBECCA
Are you ready?

FRANK
Absolutely. I runneth over.

REBECCA
OK, everyone, places!! Listen carefully. All equipment
off for this scene. Frank is shooting this one himself. He
is the camera and I hold the film, so we cannot have any
interference. Trust me. Everything off. Turn yourself
off!

The CREW all stand in a rough circle some distance away.

FRANK turns to REBECCA.

FRANK
See you.

REBECCA
Until now.

FRANK and REBECCA give each other a kiss of peace, like

the Templars in the previous scene. REBECCA moves her left
hand to her pocket, where she is holding something in a con-
tainer. FRANK walks forward at a normal pace, pausing very
slightly before entering the castle and then disappearing slow-
ly inside as all watch in silence.

REBECCA
(with her voice breaking a little)

135
 Cut! Ok, everyone, that is it. We are finished.

REBECCA walks to the back of the castle, with the rest of the
CREW following, chatting normally. The camera remains be-
hind, so that we see everyone disappear. The voice of the
CREW die down to silence and we see the castle standing
empty and silent in the desert wind for a long while. The sun
starts to set. Eventually, we hear the sound of an approaching
black helicopter. The helicopter lands and MARSILIO BARBI
gets out. He inspects the grounds, sees the footprints, and en-
ters the building, finding nothing. He walks around the back,
where he sees a human-like cross form drawn in charcoal on
the stone wall, just like in the opening scene with the THREE
FIGURES. He stares at it for a while, then approaches the wall
and places his finger within the black center of the design,
pressing on the stone very slightly near where the heart would
be to see if he might enter. Nothing doing. It is just stone. But
then he suddenly pulls back his hand and shakes it as if
burned.

MARSILIO
Sacro cuore . . .

Holding his finger, he looks at the image again, then kicks the
dust and goes back into the helicopter, which then flies away
into the distance. The camera re-enters the stone building and
becomes motionless. A formless black dust, seeming at once
in the building and in the materiality of the film itself, swirls
strangely through the space.

FADE OUT.

THE END

136
1
“ . . . after black, / The colours of the Rainbow did appear /
The Peacock’s-Tayl” (Marrow of Alchemy, 2.30).
2
A red Tau Cross (in St. Francis’s hand) and pendant:

137
3
“The peacock (pavo) takes its name from the sound of its
voice. Its flesh is so hard that it barely decays and is difficult
to cook” (Isidore, Etymologies, 12.7.48). “For who but God
the Creator of all things has given to the flesh of the peacock
its antiseptic property? This property, when I first heard of it,
seemed to me incredible; but it happened at Carthage that
a bird of this kind was cooked and served up to me, and,
taking a suitable slice of flesh from its breast, I ordered it to
be kept, and when it had been kept as many days as make
any other flesh stinking, it was produced and set before me,
and emitted no offensive smell. And after it had been laid by
for thirty days and more, it was still in the same state; and a
year after, the same still, except that it was a little more
shrivelled, and drier” (Augustine, City of God, 21.4).

138
4

“Moriendo renascor (‘In dying I am reborn’). Bone, vine, and

phoenix represent the palingeneses of the vegetable and
animal kingdoms from their mineral foundation. For
Schwaller, the human femur—the largest bone in the body—
was the repository of the fixed alchemical salt, the immortal
mineral remains that neither fire nor putrefaction can de-
stroy, ‘the last in corruption and the first in generation’
(Steeb). The incorruptible ashes or salts were regarded by
Schwaller as the passive register that preserved an entity’s
acquired consciousness, and the agent of all mutations be-
tween kingdoms and species” (Aaron Cheak, “The Call of
Fire: The Hermetic Quest of René Schwaller de Lubicz,”

139
http://www.aaroncheak.com/call-of-fire/). Photograph by A.
Cheak, Èze-sure-mer, 2005.

5
“Not sky, it's a pyramid | Black and super weird | Insides of
your own eyelid | All we've ever feared”
(https://twitter.com/Nicolam777/status/7718833625585418
24).

140
6

141
7
Massacio, Crucifixion of St. Peter:

8
“This Soul is above the law, not contrary to the law” (Mar-
guerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls).

9
“God is all. God knows all, and God does all. When the Av-
atar proclaims he is the Ancient One, it is God who pro-
claims His manifestation on earth. When man utters for or
against the Avatarhood, it is God who speaks through him. It
is God alone who declares Himself through the Avatar and
mankind. I tell you all, with my Divine Authority, that you and
I are not ‘WE,’ but ‘ONE’” (Meher Baba, 12 September 1954).

10
“About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli,
Eli, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, My God, why
have you forsaken Me?’ When some of those standing there
heard this, they said, ‘He is calling Elijah’” (Matthew 27:46-7).

142
11
“Now Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. Therefore
they said to him, ‘You are not also one of His disciples, are
you?’ He denied it and said, ‘I am not!’ One of the servants of
the high priest, a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, said,
‘Did I not see you in the garden with Him?’ Peter then de-
nied again; and immediately a rooster crowed” (John 18:25-
7).

12
Cf. “hell and heaven are both states of bondage subject to
the limitations of the opposites of pleasure and pain. Both
are states whose duration is determined by the nature,
amount and intensity of the accumulated impressions. Time
in the subtle world is not the same as time in the gross world
due to the increased subjectivity of the states of conscious-
ness; but though time in the subtle world is
thus incommensurable with time in the gross world, it is
strictly determined by the impressions accumulated in the
gross world” (Meher Baba, Discourses, III.62).

13

143
14

15
“Veramente a così alto sospetto / non ti fermar, se quella
nol ti dice / che lume fia tra 'l vero e lo 'ntelletto. / Non so se
'ntendi: io dico di Beatrice; / tu la vedrai di sopra, in su la
vetta / di questo monte, ridere e felice” (Dante, Purgatorio,
6.43-8) [However, do not desist from from such a deep
doubt until she tells you, she who will be a light between the
truth and your intellect. I don’t know if you understand; I
mean Beatrice: you will see her above, on the summit of this
mountain, smiling and happy].

16
“The process of perception runs parallel to the process of
creation, and the reversing of the process of perception
without obliterating consciousness amounts to realising the
nothingness of the universe as a separate entity. The Self

144
sees first through the mind, then through the subtle eye and
lastly through the physical eye; and it is vaster than all that it
can perceive. The big ocean and the vast spaces of the sky
are tiny as compared with the Self. In fact, all that the Self can
perceive is finite, but the Self itself is infinite. When the Self
retains full consciousness and yet sees nothing, it has
crossed the universe of its own creation and has taken the
first step to know itself as everything” (Meher Baba, Dis-
courses, II.98).

17

18
See Nicola Masciandaro, “Decapitating Cinema,” in And
They Were Two In One And One In Two, eds. Nicola Masci-
andaro & Eugene Thacker (Schism, 2014).

145
19
Cf. Salvador Dalí’s Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus):

20
“When we have worn out the interest we once took in
death, when we realize we have nothing more to gain from
it, we fall back on birth, we tum to a much more inexhausti-
ble abyss” (E. M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born).

21
“No one to worry = nothing to worry about”
(https://twitter.com/Nicolam777/status/6047445749516820
49).

146
22

See Peter Plichta, God's Secret Formula Deciphering the

Riddle of the Universe and the Prime Number Code (Element
Books, 1997). “But then we have this emergence into con-
sciousness of the set of the prime numbers buried within the
set of positive integers, a hidden archetype within an arche-
type, a kind of chaos within order, the black dot in the yin
half of the yin-yang symbol; the emergence of that arche-
type – the prime numbers, the zeta function, and everything
they entail – into mass consciousness, is just starting now,
really. … The only thing I can really say with any confidence
at all is that I think we’re on the verge – and again, the time-
scale is very indefinite here – but Western civilization is on
the verge of collectively realising that the number system is
something very different from what it had previously thought
it to be. I haven’t got a particular theory what it is, I just know

147
it isn’t what we think it is” (Matthew Watkins, “Prime Revolu-
tion (Interview),” Collapse 1 [Urbanomic, 2006]).

23
As Pyrrho is reported by Eusebius to have maintained,
“things are equally indifferent and unstable and indetermi-
nate; for this reason, neither our sensations nor our opinions
tell the truth or lie. For this reason, then, we should not trust
them, but should be without opinions and without inclina-
tions and without wavering, saying about each single thing
that it no more is than is not or both is and is not or neither is
nor is not” (Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica, XIV.18).

24

148
“The ceremony begins with long mystic preliminaries during
which the celebrant tramples down all passions and crucifies
his selfishness. Then the celebrant blows his bone trumpet,
calling the hungry demons to the feast he intends to lay be-
fore them. He envisions a female deity, who esoterically per-
sonifies his own will, and who springs from the top of his
head and stands before him, sword in hand. With one stroke
she cuts off the head of the naljorpa. Then, while troops of
ghouls crowd around for the feast, the goddess severs his
limbs, skins him, and rips open his belly. The bowels spill,
the blood gushes forth, and the hideous guests bite and
chew noisily, while the celebrant excites and urges them on
with the liturgic words of unreserved surrender: ‘For ages, in
the course of renewed births I have borrowed from count-
less living beings – at the cost of their welfare and life – food,
clothing, all kinds of services to sustain my body, to keep it
joyful in comfort and to defend it against death. Today, I pay
my debt, offering for destruction this body which I have held
so dear. I give my flesh to the hungry, my blood to the
thirsty, my skin to clothe those who are naked, my bones as
fuel to those who suffer from cold. I give my happiness to
the unhappy ones. I give my breath to bring back the dying
to life. Shame on me if I shrink from giving my self! Shame
on you, wretched and demoniac beings, if you do not dare
to prey upon I . . .’” (Alphonso Lingis, “Dreadful Mystic Ban-
quet,” Janus Head 3 [2000]).

149
25

150
26
“I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt, was one of the
ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is
called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth.
He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geome-
try and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most im-
portant of all, letters. Now the king of all Egypt at that time
was the god Thamus, who lived in the great city of the upper
region, which the Greeks call the Egyptian Thebes, and they
call the god himself Ammon. To him came Theuth to show
his inventions, saying that they ought to be imparted to the
other Egyptians. But Thamus asked what use there was in
each, and as Theuth enumerated their uses, expressed
praise or blame, according as he approved or disapproved.
The story goes that Thamus said many things to Theuth in
praise or blame of the various arts, which it would take too
long to repeat; but when they came to the letters, ‘This in-
vention, O king,’ said Theuth, ‘will make the Egyptians wiser
and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory
and wisdom that I have discovered.’ But Thamus replied,
‘Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the ability to beget
arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmful-
ness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who
are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to
ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they real-
ly possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in
the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not
practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by
external characters which are no part of themselves, will dis-
courage the use of their own memory within them. You have
invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you
offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wis-
dom, for they will read many things without instruction and
will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for

151
the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they
are not wise, but only appear wise’” (Plato, Phaedrus).

27
“This has been the theme of my life ever since: love – hor-
ror, horror – love: one worse than the other” (Ladislav Klima,
Glorious Nemesis).

28

29
See Jame McClenon and Emily D. Edwards, “The Incubus
in Film, Experience, and Folklore,” Southern Folklore 52.1

152
(1996): 3-18. “The creature is said to produce evil dreams
(nightmares) by sitting on the chest of the sleeper. These
dreams might be carnal in nature, or they might simply in-
volve a sense of suffocation or oppression . . . It is the night-
rider, the creature that rides the man or woman to love or
death . . . The nightmare is the incubus or succubus” (Stan
Gooch, The Origins of Psychic Phenomena: Poltergeists, In-
cubi, Succubi, and the Unconscious Mind).

30

153
31

32

154
33

34

155
35

156
36

157
37

158
38

159
39

160
40

161
41

42
See Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cogni-
tion in the Middle Ages (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

43
See Nicola Mascianaro and Anna Kłosowksa, “Between
Angela and Actaeon: Dislocation,” L’Esprit Créateur 50
(2010): 91-105.

162
44

45
“What then will we say? Does it not seem that this degree
of love (amoris) turns a man’s mind to madness, as it were,
when it will not allow him to hold a limit or measure to his
jealous love (emulatione)? Does it not appear to be the
height of madness to spurn true life, to reject the highest
wisdom, and to resist omnipotence?” (Richard of St. Victor,
On the Four Degrees of Violent Love).

163
46

164
47

48

165
49
“This steryng was mikel to forsakyn, and nevertheless
mornyng and sorow I made therefor without reason and dis-
cretion. But Jesus, that in this vision enformid me of all that
me nedyth, answerid by this word, and seyd: Synne is be-
hovabil, but al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner
of thyng shal be wele. In this nakid word synne, our Lord
browte to my mynd generally al that is not good, and the
shamfull dispite and the utter nowtyng that He bare for us in
this life, and His dyeng, and al the peynys and passions of al
His creatures, gostly and bodily – for we be all in party now-
tid, and we shall be nowtid followyng our Master Jesus till
we be full purgyd, that is to sey, till we be fully nowtid of our
dedly flesh and of al our inward affections which arn not very
good – and the beholdyng of this with al peynys that ever
wern or ever shal be; and with al these I understond the pas-
sion of Criste for most peyne and overpassyng. And al this
was shewid in a touch, and redily passid over into comforte.
For our good Lord wold not that the soule were afferd of this
uggly syte” (Julian of Norwich, Shewings).

166
50

51
“Death by individuation | Perfect upside down | Headless
translation | Empyrean crown”
(https://twitter.com/Nicolam777/status/7485067749367848
97).

52
“When you know that every problem is only a false prob-
lem, you are dangerously close to salvation” (E. M. Cioran,
The New Gods).

167
53

54

168
55
Cf. “From the initial meetings with Sai Baba and Upasni
Maharaj in 1915, Merwan started a grim habit which was to
last the entire seven years of his coming down to normal
consciousness. Every day Merwan would regularly strike his
forehead on the stone floor of his room for hours. Some
days in the afternoon, between one and five o'clock, he
would go to the Golibar area of Poona or to the isolated
Pataleshwar Cave Temple. At the Tower of Silence, sitting
under a tree, he would continue this gruesome ritual —
knocking his forehead on a rock or against a stone wall. He
was not merely tapping his head on the stone surface, but
pounding and pounding his brow upon it with full force —
always inflicting a bloody wound. After knocking his head
hour after hour against stone, Merwan would collapse. He
would then wipe the blood off his face and clean himself,
and tie a large kerchief or hand-towel around his forehead

169
to serve as a bandage and a makeshift turban, thus conceal-
ing the wound from his family when he returned home. The
local neighbors, and his relatives in particular, thought that,
by tying a kerchief around his head, Merwan was complying
with some new fashion trend. Little did they know the real
reason for wearing the kerchief. Only Merwan's closest
friends knew how he spent his mornings and afternoons, but
they did not reveal this to Merwan's family, though they
themselves did not understand his strange behavior. While
in Lahore with the Alfred Theatrical Company, Merwan had
also pursued this painful self-inflicted practice. He would
manage the company and its performances until late in the
night. During the day, when the rest of the group was sleep-
ing, he would rise early and quietly slip away to a deserted
place, where he would bang his forehead against a flag-
stone for hours. To come down from the highest spiritual
state of God-consciousness — ‘I Am God’ — to the normal
human consciousness — ‘I am a man’ — entails unimaginable
suffering. This striking of his forehead was somehow a com-
fort to Merwan during the extreme anguish of his descent
from the God state to normal or worldly consciousness.
Merwan himself later described these days of seeming ago-
ny: “This constant hammering of my head was the only thing
that gave me some relief during my real suffering of coming
down — which I have repeatedly said is indescribable” (Lord
Meher, 177).

170
56

57
Monkeyshines (1889-90):

171
58
See Nancy Butcher, The Strange Case of the Walking
Corpse (Penguin, 2004) and Alina Popa, “Dead Thinking,”
Bezna 5 (2014).

59
“In hell, everything is personalized”
(https://twitter.com/Nicolam777/status/2608800774772695
04).

60

172
61

173
62

63
Literally “dancing Judas,” referring to the spasms of a
hanged man. A favorite exclamation of Italian horror comic
hero Dylan Dog.

64
Cf. Umberto, “Forsaken Dawn,” From the Grave (2010).

174